Thurman#1

You're mis-stating the model there. They clearly value pass-rushing DLs. Rousseau, for one. And for a DT, Oliver rushes very well. They also brought in Von. They value it. It's just that great pass-rushing DEs aren't usually still available where we generally draft. How many first rounders have the Chiefs spent on receivers? They traded up this year, but we got our WR only about five picks later this year. That's not about position value, it's about who each team liked and where they thought they could get them. The Chiefs've used a lot of draft picks on DLs as well. 10 since 2018 out of 48. And five out of 21 in the first three rounds, including three first rounders. This model has worked and is currently outperforming any other model. It's damn sustainable. Even if not with Cam Newton's health going so early.

Please. The fact that Diggs was drafted in the 5th completely ignores the fact that we spent a first on him. And he was worth it. Spending a first on a receiver is not putting receiver at a very low priority.

Yeah, absolutely. But we are talking about that year. Still amazed by how early Newton's drop-off happened, and how steep it was. I guess I disagree that he was overrated. Everyone knows he was never very good after that year. Before that year, pretty damn good. That year. Terrific.

Myself, no.

The Bills RBs are better. Stewart was on his way downhill at that point, 4.1 YPG, 989 yards and 99 more on passes. Give me Cook and whoever else, by quite a bit. Cook is really good, really productive. 4.1 YPC for the Panthers that year, leaving Newton's runs out of it. Cam's passing yards that year: 3837 Josh's passing yards the past four years: 4544, 4407, 4283, 4306 When I started looking this stuff up, I thought sure Cam's passing yards would be significantly below Josh's, but that his running yards would be well above. 'Tain't so. Josh's passing yards were well above Cam's, but his rush yards are, on the average, about equal to Cam's that year. Cam had 636 yards and 10 TDs. Josh went 421, 763, 762 and 524, which averages out to about the same. And 8, 6, 7 and 15 TDs, which averages out to 9 TDs a season, one below Cam. Give me Josh. But not by all that much. Newton was terrific that year.

The question is whether this happens. It's guesswork. Might happen, might not. Very possibly they can go deep as they're constructed. But a lot of the reason they dinked and dunked more is because that's what's available, not just to us but to all of the better passing offenses. Mahomes had the lowest YPA of his career, by a very significant margin last year. He dinked and dunked too. And I hear he can throw a little bit hard himself. Dinking and dunking becomes more necessary as defenses teams that like to go deep get defensed by using cover two more and more efficiently.

Oh, and hey, the pessimistic view could turn out to be right here. I certainly hope not, but it absolutely could.

McDermott did that, he's said so, because he didn't think he was capable of fully evaluating QBs, especially in the whirlwind of getting things started as a coach in his first year. You don't care? Fine. But why should we care what you care about? Not that you're not just as smart as the rest of us - I'm sure you are - but pretending we know that Mahomes would have been the same guy in Buffalo is not reasonable. He might have, or he might not. Under Reid and with a year to sit and learn he has been terrific. So has Allen. The reason he thinks Beane is the primary decision maker is because there is zero credible evidence that it isn't true. Zero. Beane says it's true, McDermott says it's true, everyone says it's true, and there's no reason to think Beane would settle for being a rubber stamp.

Bill, Carter is going to be a team leader and soon. No, almost certainly not as a rookie, generally it's not up to rookies to lead, but soon. At Duke they said there was one team-wide leader and that was Carter. So, soon. And there's every reason to believe Carter will be here for a while. And if Josh Allen is smart - and he is - he'd be happier with the guy who makes the team better. Josh shows no signs of being an offense-or-bust guy. As for speed, Keon ran a 4.62 at the combine. But also the electronic tracking data shows he plays faster than that. No, he's not a burner. Yes, he's fast enough to be very effective. In any case, the final goal in drafting a WR is not to draft the fastest one. It is to draft the best one. Sometimes those two overlap. Plenty of times they do not. I didn't want Coleman there. But I'm capable of being plenty wrong. We'll have to see. As for not having anybody fast in 12, depends on whether Curtis Samuel is on the field. He ran a 4.31. Again, speed isn't everything. No, it doesn't concern me right now that we might or might not have a burner on the field in 12 formations. It will if we turn out to be not very productive in those formations, but that's too early to say. I'm not all confident all of a sudden. Not one of those they-drafted-him-so-I'm-all-in guys, but but he's got a solid chance to be good or even very good. Looking forward to see if that happens.

Yes. This. Without a doubt.

Well, I guess we can agree to mildly disagree. IMO moving around and trading up a bit - say having a draft equivalent to Philly's - would still have left us having taken a step back. this year. Even successful rookies rarely have such a huge impact that year, not enough to make up for losing Morse, Diggs and Gabe Davis, Tre, Leonard Floyd and several more marginal contributors. I just don't see it. I mean, say we traded up for BTJ. Do you think he makes 1000 yards this season? It's certainly reasonably possible, but the odds are against it. My guess would be 700 - 900 yards, and that would be a success. And comparing our draft to Philly's overlooks several facts. First, that they started six spots above us. If we'd had that draft spot, we could have picked up BTJ without a trade-up. Second they also started the day in a much better position, with picks 50 and 53. Philly's original 22, 50 and 53 was a great deal better situation than our 28 and 60. Their two seconds made it possible to both trade up to #40 and at the same time to acquire both an additional third and fourth. Their final positions were considerably better than ours. That helped them do better in the draft. And they got to those final positions because they started with much better positions. But yeah, for us, solid but not exciting. We weren't in a position, IMO, to do much better than we did.

Yes, but Tyreek Hill wasn't invited to the combine. His pro day work out would have been #9.

The thing is, many do break down. But some don't. You get some Roscoe Parrishes. And then you get some DeSean Jacksons. We'll have to see which way he tends. I know I didn't want him in the first. But I also didn't want Keon Coleman in the first. He's a Chief, so I hope he doesn't work out. Making a joke? I see. Sorry I didn't pick that up. Having said that, no, he doesn't take daily workout videos. But he used to do plenty of videos and interviews about his work with Jordan Palmer and what he was working on back when he was young in the league and worried and highly motivated. Last two years nothing. That's what makes people speculate. Anyway, see you round the boards.

Oh, please. Nobody minds Josh taking a week or two to have fun. And more on the weekends. It's whether he doesn't consistently work during most of the offseason. His first few years here he worked a ton in the offseason and he let people know it. There were no problems with him also playing golf and going to the Masters and whatever. But the last couple of years we don't hear anything about his offseason work. It's totally legit to question the differences there. And Josh knows it, which is why he's again let us know this year when he's working. He knows that narratives matter. They do. We don't need him being a Peyton Manning, though I personally wouldn't mind. But we need to know he's taking it seriously and addressing problems in advance.

Hmm, projection. A clear sign he's got a point.

Nope. Or anyway, you have to stretch to say so. Before the season Manning agreed to a reduction in salary from $19M to $15M. Top 6: Rodgers $22M Ryan $20.75M Flacco $20.1M Brees $20M Kaepernick $19M Cutler $18.1M That $4M they saved was big money back then. In other words, Manning was making a salary that would have put him far above the top five cutoff, and he then agreed to a reduction that took him outside that cutoff. And that's the team that won the Super Bowl. This is an argument that the OP is right, not that he's wrong. In fairness, he ended up making the money back. His $4M pay cut was exchanged for $4M in unlikely to be earned incentives, namely $2M if they made the Super Bowl and $2M more if they won it. But unlikely to be earned bonuses count against the next year's cap. He earned it. They don't win that SB without Manning, but he gave the team back money that allowed them to make some moves. Specifically, Manning took the pay cut on March 4th and they signed the new contract for Demaryius on July 17th. Back then, $4M was almost 3% of the team's cap. Who else did they bring in with that money that helped them win a title? There is certainly no way to show they would have signed the Thomas contract if they hadn't got the extra money from Manning. Oh, and yes top five was a somewhat random choice, but also a completely reasonable one. It's not squeezing it down to the top two or something to eliminate as many candidates as possible. Yet it keeps the field down to teams spending very very serious money on WRs. The fact that you only found one that was even close points out that it indeed appears to be a line that has some real life consequences for crossing. Obviously, getting and paying, even very highly, an excellent QB, particularly one as good as Allen, is an excellent idea. The very questionable part here is paying the WR. Once the QB's salary starts to bite, teams have to make compromises elsewhere. Bringing in in stead a solid group of WRs, and particularly a good TE since they cost less and can come very close in productivity, is what has proved the best strategy to win a Lombardi.

Well, yeah, that is indeed a ridiculous premise. I'd argue that he was exaggerating a bit in the headline, but has an excellent point. Saying it can't be done is indeed likely over the top. Many of us are saying that winning in those circumstances appears to be much less likely. And that paying both a top 5 QB and a top 5 WR is maybe not such a great use of money. That's an entirely reasonable argument. And yeah, as I said, I'm sure you are right there are more. Which just makes the point stronger. The fact there are quite a few teams that tried this strategy who made the top four, the fact that none then won is significant. Have a great Sunday, Doc.

Kupp has now signed a huge 3-year $80M deal. In 2022. But when they won the SB, Kupp was on a 3-year $47M deal, by no means a top five deal. Julio signed a $22M deal the same year Kupp signed that contract. The top 11 guys were making $16.2M or more. https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nfl/2020/03/04/highest-paid-wide-receivers-nfl-ranking-wrs-salary-2020-season/4953433002/ Which made sense at the time. His first four years he put up 869, 566, 1161 and 974 yards, with respectively 5, 6, 10 and 3 TDs. He was a good receiver, but it wasn't till his Super Bowl year going 1947 with 16 TDs that he looked like a #1.

Yeah, it's a narrow lens. But that's no reason not to look at it that way. Just the opposite, in fact. It's precisely that narrow lens that we're trying to fit through. We made the Super Bowl four years in a row. Didn't win one. Do teams look at us to see how we did it? Hell, no. The goal is winning a Super Bowl. Of course you're going to look at how the winners did it. If having a narrow lens were a problem, you wouldn't ever look at narrow lenses. And making a Super Bowl isn't much less narrow. It's just more convenient for folks who don't like the results when you only look at the winners. Same with the final four. It's less narrow, but still very narrow. We already made that group you're talking about. We were a top four team in 2020. Did you feel you got to the top of the mountain? If anything, looking at the final four tells you just what we need to be looking at. We've been a damn good team, extremely competitive, for years now. We need to know how to take the next step. Making the top four is NOT the goal. So yeah, you're right that "it can be done," to make the top four doing that. You found, what 6 teams? There are probably more. So if six or more teams got that high but none of them made it to the mountaintop, that in itself tells you something. We need to know how to differentiate ourselves from the top four into the top one. So if paying a QB and a WR both is the way into the top four but not the top one, we should be looking at finding a way to win a Lombardi, not just to get to the top four. The salary cap years are over 30 years now. That's statistically signficant. How many teams in those years have paid both a QB and a WR? Now how many of those teams were competitive for a championship? 25? 50? And none of them won? That's statistically significant.

$16M may be reasonable for the guy, but not for the Bills present cap situation, particularly in a year where they are making a conscious effort to clear up the cap so they can go back to normal operations next year. Also don't think the Bears get rid of him. The likelihood is that if they bring in another guy he'll prolly be in the Beckham - Chark salary range of around $5M or so.

Well, there you go. Obviously this was a sneaky move to bring in a new WR. He's probably working on route-running as we speak. Everyone knows all we need is speed there.

The run game is important, as are all phases. But it's probably the least important of the four phases. The Chiefs haven't had a better than average running game for a long time, and they do OK. 17th in total yards and 13th in yards per carry last year. Very average. The Texans run game weren't good, 22nd total and 29th at YPC. They will absolutely compete this year, though they may get better at the run game. They have a ways to go to get better than average at toting the rock.

Agreed that they likely took a step back. But how would you avoid that in a year where they had to cut so many for the reasons you stated, and where Diggs then got his wish to get out of town? I don't think they expected to get rid of Diggs this year. But pile that on top of Morse, Poyer, Hyde, Tre, etc. and a bit of a down year seems inevitable to me. This draft looks to me like one that will help us build towards the future, while still giving us a shot this year. I'm not excited about it, but it looks solid.

Not even close. Reloading is a factual difference in approach, meaning you can still be competitive this year and certainly next. Rebuilding means you have no chance the next two years, and an extremely slight chance in year 3, and you have a new GM. If you are a GM trying to sell your owner a rebuild you'd better have a couple of Super Bowl championships under your belt, because you're telling the owner that the roster you built has no realistic chance for a championship anytime soon and so you need to throw it all out and start over. Without championships you're telling the owner that you just weren't a good enough GM.

"Rebuild" is way too strong a word here. "Transition" makes a ton more sense. You don't rebuild when you have a Josh Allen on the roster, you just don't. An extremely successful rebuild can be competitive in the third year, but 90% take till the fourth or fifth. The Bills will be competitive this year, though they will likely not be quite as good as last year unless things go really really well. Again, transition fits the situation much much better. Which is why Beane used it.