Thurman#1

Yeah, all the greatest coaches were terrific pro players.

Moving a statue into a museum and out of public spaces isn't asking people to get over their history. It's asking the government and the country to revere people who deserve some reverence rather than people who chose to fight for a truly abhorrent system. I agree with anyone out there who thinks that political correctness has gone too far. But particularly in the case of the statues in state capitols and statues which were raised far after the Civil War and in many cases with specific racist agendas, I think people are right to call for them to be removed.

Whether names are inspired by native Americans doesn't have much to do with it. The current name refers directly to color of skin and is seen by native Americans as a disparaging reference. Chiefs and Braves not quite so much. As for the news ... nothing has moved that front office in any way ... but now income is affected, in many ways. Expect change.

DiMarco got one hand on it and it was raked out. That throw was there when Josh threw but there was no way to get it there before the safety arrived while still making it over the coverage. Still bothers me that he had two guys open, Brown for a first and Singletary probably for a first and certainly for 10 yards or so on a 2nd and 12 play. The Bills as a team weren't good enough but the same can be said of Allen.

2015 Tyrod was sensational for his first seven games and then for the last seven was almost precisely what he would turn out to be ... he was already 2016 and 2017 Tyrod for that last half of the year in 2015. In game 8, Belichick showed how to defend him and he was never as effective again. His passer rating those last seven games of 2015 were within a point and a half of his career. He went from one game out of the first seven under a 91 passer rating (which is really really good) to four games out of seven below 83 (which is just not good). His last two years with the Bills his passer rating was 89. And that's what he was in the last half of 2015 too.

Completion means from the LOS to the tackle. Air yards means from the LOS to the catch site. If a QB ran backwards 40 yards in a scramble and threw a completion caught one yard beyond the LOS, nobody would call that 41 air yards or a 41 yard gain or a 41 yard completion. Even though if you look at it literally it absolutely travelled 41 yards in the air. Nobody calculates things that way in football terms. Every way of calculating passes starts at the LOS. That Brown play in your second example was 34 air yards and a 40 yard completion. In your first example the picture isn't great but it appears to be made at the 22 or 23, and the LOS is the 47, which makes it a 53 yard touchdown that was about 31 or 32 air yards. EDIT: Next Gen Stats has one called LCAD which does refer to distance from hand to hand, but I don't think anyone else uses that measure.

I'm no Cowherd fan, but changing your position when the facts and the situations change isn't just smart, it's what intelligent people should do.

So he's saying, starting tomorrow, and he's very much including the QB's current situation. That would certainly make it reasonable for him to be ahead of Darnold and Fitz. That's still high for me, but not wildly unreasonable. He's clearly wrong when he says they had no deep threat last year. Brown was wide open over the top and overthrown a good 5 - 7 times last year. He is a terrific deep threat though that part of his game was wasted last year. He puts Allen ahead of Cam basically because the defense is better in Buffalo. And he doesn't like Cam's injury history. With those criteria, again, not wildly unreasonable.

I got from the statement that it's now official ... at this time. Things could change. If you had to bet, though, you wouldn't probably bet against this continuing moving forward.

I don't think too many people remember how terrific that defense was. One quick measure of that was that if you look at DVOA, they weren't just the best team in the league that year, they were about 50% better than the next-best team when using unweighted figures and around 70% better when using the weighted figures, weighted for strength of schedule. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/nfl/team-defense/2004 More FootballOutsiders has that 2004 defense as the 7th best ever!!!!!!!!! They only look at teams from 1950 and onwards, but still. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2014/historical-dvoa-estimates It's a real shame that that offense, and in particular Bledsoe, just weren't very good. The offense was listed as 21st when unweighted and 18th when weighted for schedule difficulty.

60% doesn't matter so much. It's a convenient benchmark, but what matters is accuracy. And while you should absolutely not judge accuracy using only completion percentage ... if you do reduce Allen's drop artificially to NFL average, what you get is a QB who is in the mid-30s in completion percentage. Yeah, it's fractionally above 60%, but that doesn't make it actually good. And again, no, there are NOT a lot of guys who have improved accuracy. Some, no question about it. But not a lot. And Brees isn't one. In college he was already considered deadly accurate, though not so much on long balls. His negatives were his height, having taken few direct snaps and the usual college to pro development worries. Brees' problems his first couple of years in the pros weren't about accuracy so much as reading defenses, quick decision making and generally getting used to the far more complex pro game, not to mention the lack of talent SD had at the skill positions when he was finally put in in his second year. Plenty of guys improve their completion percentages but not many have significantly improved their accuracy. Agreed that Allen appears to already be one of those guys who can improve and has. How much will be a question, but it's certainly hopeful that he already has. And agreed about Cam also, he shows it's possible to be a very good QB even with accuracy problems, but he also shows that guys like that need a lot of things to go right at the same time. It's hard for guys like that to make their teams consistently competitive at the highest level. But if you are going to try, it helps if you've got a defense that is consistently excellent, and it sure looks like McD knows how to do this.

I get the sarcasm. But he's not wrong when he says it's a skill and it's hard to learn. It is hard to learn. Not impossible, but hard. Some QBs have clearly improved themselves over the years in accuracy, and I'm sure you all know the usual suspects. Equally, though, every year in the draft there are a few guys who aren't very accurate and the pundits and draftniks say it's in their mechanics and they can be improved. They may well be right that the mechanics are the key to the problems for a lot of these guys. But a very very large majority of those guys who "can be improved," ... aren't. Some can, and Allen himself appears to be one of them. But he's right when he says it's hard to learn. Oh, and anyone who says that completion percentage and accuracy are not the same thing ... is dead-on correct.

It doesn't necessarily all go on the WRs. Remember that in John Brown's last year in Balt, he was on track to end up with more than a thousand yard when Flacco was QBing, and then when Jackson took over, Brown's yards plummeted. Here are Brown's game by game totals that year. 3 receptions for 44 yards 4 for 92 5 for 86 3 for 116 4 for 58 2 for 28 7 for 134 3 for 28 3 for 15 Jackson takes over 1 for 23 1 for 25 0 for 0 2 for 23 1 for 9 2 for 27 1 for 7 ... and then 72 for 1060 the next year with Josh Allen. I don't think anyone would say that the blame for his late season lack of productivity should all or even mostly go to Brown.

Damn those depraved young QBs. Typo, yeah? Agreed with your range. 3rd to 7th sounds about right. And I agree the Bills wouldn't take that deal.

Well, yeah, if you throw in Allen's rookie year that was supposed to be a redshirt, yeah, you can make things look bad. But last year Allen was 20/9. More, he greatly improved last year after the NE game. In his last 12 games he had 17 TDs and 3 INTs. But yeah, throw in the old data if you want to make him look bad. Not that Allen doesn't have a long way to go. He does. But your argument ignores his trajectory totally, which for a young and improving guy distorts the picture.