Thurman#1

Antonio Brown. I kid. Steve Largent. Fred Biletnikoff. Is Ahmad Rashad fair? He was only a Bill for one year. I like Austin Ekeler a ton also. Guys who do their business.

Wouldn't say the Bills are ahead, but we were a bit ahead the last year or two. At this point, the trend has caught up to the few who got out ahead. This is the swing of the pendulum. Many started to go on about how offenses have taken over the game, and that nobody should hire a defensive coach. But the pendulum was still swinging and Ds figured out how to attack the high-flying stuff with two-deep variations. Offenses got ahead a few years ago, defenses figured out it out. Your numbers are very interesting. Hadn't realized it had gone so far as your stats show it has. Good find. Thanks! We're all at the lowest since '92 and highest since '87!! Hunh!!!

Check this out from a recent Athletic article. IMO it also gets at a really really deep and unappreciated reason for their success: "We shouldn’t make blanket statements based off two outcomes that easily could have gone the other way for Kansas City, which won 26-25. But as the Chiefs outlasted another AFC challenger, I recalled a note from colleague Dianna Russini’s column Saturday pointing out how Mahomes and Kelce did not miss a practice all summer. "I thought of the Bengals practicing without key players during their training camp, including Ja’Marr Chase, who was pushing for a new contract. I thought about the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson skipping four of Baltimore’s first five voluntary OTAs, forfeiting $750,000 in incentives. "Are these little things indicators of anything relevant when the Chiefs’ most established stars are their most consistently reliable ones?" https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5768278/2024/09/16/vikings-sam-darnold-nfl-field-goals-pick-six/ I mean, dang that's a great point.

Yeah, this for those old Pats and these Chiefs. Having a Brady, a Mahomes, or for that matter an Allen means you're always in one-score games and even two-score games. IMO one other thing those teams did is they had plenty of average role players but rarely a genuine hole. The Chiefs don't. The Pats didn't. And except last year on the defense after all those injuries, we don't either.

There's a third category, guys who very well could have been successful players but were picked into crap situations, where they didn't fit the system or where the surroundings undermined their chances. IMO one of your category one guys, David Carr, is actually a Category 3 guy. Geno Smith may be another, although perhaps he needed a ton of time as well as a better situation. There are plenty of others. IMO it's still very early on Bryce Young. He could still be in any of the three.

That's why I didn't say anything about wins. I said "impressive starts" only mean anything at the start. Wins are good whether impressive or not.

0-2 Baltimore and 0-2 Cincinnati? Last year they were tougher. This year, who knows?

Bills. But impressive starts only mean anything at the start.

They really haven't consistently struggled in the playoffs. Against most teams they've been very good indeed. They have consistently struggled in the playoffs against the Chiefs. Fair enough if you want to add in that Bengals game also, but the team themselves said they just just didn't didn't have any juice, that they ran out of gas with the Damar situation and all the rest of the crap that happened that season.

Yeah, that and at the same time he started to pay more attention to analytics. He has always self-scouted and at the time he mentioned this.

This, unfortunately. If we're still at the same numbers halfway through the season, then it'll really mean something.

Reid did make it to the SB in his sixth year. Which is a fine accomplishment. But some of that was luck in playoff opponents. In the NFC playoffs that year, Philly got the 8-8 Vikings and the 11-5 Falcons who were the 20th best offense and the 19th best defense. Mike Vick made the Falcs a wildly entertaining team but they weren't a great team. There was nobody remotely like the recent Chiefs in the Eagles way to that Super Bowl. But the 2002 Eagles beat the Falcons again and lost badly to the Bucs in the Conf. championship, the 2001 Eagles beat the 9-7 Bucs, and the Dick Jauron version of the Bears before losing to the Rams. In 2003 they beat the pretty good Packers, their best playoff win back then but then lost to the Jake Delhomme Panthers, a team that was decent but certainly not great. Reid was lucky enough not to run into any very good teams in the playoffs back then. Though again, the 2003 Pack was a good win though that was not Green Bay's best year at all. Reid was a quarterback whisperer, and McDermott is the same on defense. Fair enough, though, that Reid also is someone McDermott should not yet be compared to. Running this KC juggernaut has proved him one of the absolute top few. It has also proved him a very good argument for keeping McDermott. Reid looked like he might never win a Lombardi. Until he did.

Yet again, that Troy Brown New England team was extremely healthy outside of CB. Rudely healthy, actually. "Most of the secondary out?" Yeah, except for the safeties, who were healthy all year. Eugene Wilson played all year except Week 16 and then played all three playoff games and Rodney Harrison played all sixteen regular season games and all three playoff games as well. CB Asante Samuel missed two games but then came back to play the rest of the season and all three playoff games and CB Randall Gay missed one game but played all three playoff games as well. They did lose two CBs but other than that were pretty much unscathed. And while putting Troy there wasn't stupid, it wasn't a mark of genius or anything. They put their emergency CB on the field when they had to, and they found out he could play pretty well. That's not genius. It's finding out that you had the right guy in place. The Troy Brown story is great, but the great part of it was Troy Brown, not Belichick. They had a hole and Brown did a good job when they put him there. That's not brilliant coaching. It's good play from a guy who was playing at a position he had very little experience at, impressive performance by a fine player. The idea that large numbers of injuries don't keep some teams away from titles is only obvious. It's factual. You're right about this much, McDermott certainly shouldn't be compared to Belichick at this point in terms of greatness. It's cool that he's hit that number, but it doesn't mean much beyond the fact that he's a very good coach, which we knew already. He's no Belichick, nor really is anyone else. But the rest of your post here is just dumb.

Hunh. Wow!! Thanks for posting. This this this this this!!!

One penalty? Wow, hadn't noticed that. That's great to hear.