Thurman#1

Dude, please.

I see it. You listen to the whole thing and he's not being the least bit negative about Allen. But yeah, expressed himself very badly.

This makes the most sense about what happened. Marcus generally is pretty on-target. There does seem to be the constant need for an argument, in all media and on all subjects.

Interesting stuff, Bill, thanks. I'll start looking for that in terms of Kumerow being in for run plays vs. pass plays. And I didn't see Sweeney outside. I'll try to start looking for that too.

They're comfortable with McKenzie and Crowder playing outside as well if the situation calls for it. My guess is that as the year goes on, Shakir will be more and more active. But we'll see. Crowder played about a quarter of his Jets snaps outside. McKenzie has also been outside periodically, though not as often as Crowder. You may see them as "almost solely slot guys." It appears (so far) that the Bills differ with you on that. We'll see how that changes or continues as things go on, but that's how the Bills appear to be thinking right now.

That will happen. It does for every player every season. I can't imagine it would be much of a problem. If there's anything Miller has shown over the years it's that once he's signed by a team, he's not a selfish guy. He's all about the team (once he's got a contract).

About this is what I'd like. My guess is they'll be maybe just a bit higher but not running at what he did with the Rams last year. His salary is guaranteed for three years. They don't want to burn him out early. If possible they'd love to see him here for five years.

Yes. How many of his career problems were caused by those two specific injuries? And how much by drastic wear and tear and being psychologically broken down? You don't know. Nobody does. But what you do know is that he was a running QB whose career appears to have been drastically abbreviated. And Cam was a big strong man who liked to run and didn't mind being hit hard. Sound familiar?

But there's no way to know whether part of Griffin's injury might have been caused by restriction of motion from previous hits or whatever. Or that his many hits in the future years might have hurt his ability to recover from that injury. He was a running QB whose career was drastically cut short. Would it have been cut short if he hadn't been a running QB? That's arguable, but in fact, he was a running QB whose career was cut short. Cunningham? The last half of his career he was a shell of himself. I give you that Vick's torched career wasn't caused by injury but by moral turpitude but again the last half of his career he wasn't the same. Had that one great year when I thought he might, but he just wasn't good after 2010 as he'd been. Steve Young went 15 seasons but his first seven he played very little. A great player and a guy who didn't lose many games to injury or wear, but it's not like he had 15 years of wear and tear on him. He didn't. Kordell Stewart? 9 seasons? Please. That's how long he was in the league but not how long he played. Elway is a pretty good example. He's also a guy who could run but didn't do it a lot unless he had to. Lasted a long time, though. McNair ran a lot less and was a lot less athletic late, but he's also a good example of a running QB who played well for a long time. But there aren't a ton of them. Although I'd also thrown in Mr. Fran Tarkenton.

It's a breakdown whose assumptions and methods make it kind of questionable. She treats games missed as her unit of study, but by her assumptions, guys like Cam Newton and Robert Griffin III didn't miss all that many games. She didn't look at what caused injuries. And she didn't look (nor could you, really, but it's the absolute main point) of how shortened the careers of guys like Griffin III and Cam Newton have been. That's two guys out of a group of 12 QBs with the highest run percentages.

Yeah, weird like the fact that his Wyoming clavicle break came on a scramble, that his 2018 AC joint injury came on a pass rush and his 2019 concussion came on a run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jabxf8lGjfo That's two of his three major injuries coming on runs when he has far fewer runs than he does passes.

It's the first game. If we see it continue, we'll know it's real. We're not there yet. It could easily have been something particular to the Rams, or even just to put a lot of runs on tape so teams have to prepare for it before they jigger the amount down for most of the rest of the season. No way to know this early. One of the problems is that Allen himself seems to love it. And he has a ton of say on what the Bills do at this point. I hope they adjust it down significantly. He'll always run when plays break down, it's part of why he's so very good. But I hope they really limit his planned runs. Too early to say right now. This team wants a title right now. This year. That will play into how they game plan. It'll be interesting. One thing I was disappointed not to see was sliding. One play in particular he got around 8 or 9 yards on a first down run (planned, if I remember right) and was met by two defenders. I was saying, "Go down, go down," and he just refused to do so, trying to smash his way to a 1st. Pick your spots at least, Josh!!

Um, OK. So, why did you say: When you say stuff like this, of course people are going to tell you about the actual facts about SB teams.

Yeah, hard to figure out why they kept trying using the strategy that got them 5.6 ypa versus the strategy that got them 2.4 ypc. Clearly a logician would tell you that we can see from those numbers that if they'd run more they have done much better.

No, you can't be sure about something like that, that's a guess. Might be correct. Might not. But we know that our run game was better in 2021 than in 2020, in YPA and in total yards. Yet Allen's passing was slightly better in 2020, and a signficantly higher INT percentage in 2021 despite the run game being quite a bit worse in total. Certainly there were other reasons for this it's not a great correlation. But that's the point. You can't assume that your imaginary alternate reality correlation will be true or even if they happened would be true through cause and effect. Um, no. 9 rushes by running backs, not 9 rushes. And numbers introduced by phrases like, "something like" are right out there as guesses. Guessed numbers wouldn't show anything anyway. What if they were higher? Lower? We have no idea what would have happened. All we really know is that the whole offense played awful, that the line was overwhelmed, and that when they did run, the backs the results sucked. Thinking those numbers showed they should run more makes no sense. They can't run and they can't pass and that means they should have run more and things would have been better? There's no logic there.

No, it wasn't. Again, when they tried to run, they were awful. Moss went 3 for 6 in that game and Singletary 6 for 16.

That was a lot of years ago. The game was different then. And you do NOT NEED a 1,000 yard rusher. You just don't. The Rams didn't have one last year, nor did they have an especially good run game. The Bucs did not have one the year before. The Chiefs best runner didn't reach 500 yards the year before when they won the Lombardi. You have to go back to the 2016 season to find a single Super Bowl champion with a 1,000 yard rusher on the team. That would not be true if you "need" a 1,000 yard runner. Improving any facet of the team will help results. But you can't improve every facet, not with the salary cap and the rise of parity. It's a balancing act, and you have to have priorities. Your run offense is a lower priority than the other three facets. It still helps to have a good one. But it helps a lot less than having a good passing offense and defense.

That was mostly just a crappy game by Allen and really the whole offense. Including the run game, by the way. Moss went 3 for 6 in that game and Singletary 6 for 16. Are we supposed to think that if we'd just kept running and making crappy gains the Jags would have thought that they needed to switch their defensive focus? The problem wasn't a lack of runs. It was a terrible game in all facets of the offensive game. Ah, said it better than I. Their DL killed our OL but nobody played well on that side of the ball.

No, they really do not support that at all. The Rams last year were 25th best at total run yards and 26th best at YPC. The 2020 Bucs were 28th best at run yards and 26th best at YPC. The 2019 Chiefs were 23rd in total run yards and 13th at YPC. On run defense? They were 26th best at total run yards allowed and 29th best at YPC allowed. Not only are they absolutely not vital but the last three SB winners have not been very good at one or both. That's a lot closer to immaterial than it is to vital. Being good at any phase of the game helps your team. But of the four phases, there are the two least vital.

"Hard-pressed to find a team with a good running game that doesn't win games," you say? No, not at all. It partly depends on what you call a good running game. Most yards? Most yards per carry? Most yards with QB runs eliminated? In any of these cases there are plenty of examples of teams with good run games that didn't win games. The 8-9 Bears last year were 4th in the league in run yards and first in YPC. The 7-10 Seahawks were 3rd in YPC and 11th in run yards. The 2020 8-8 Pats were 3rd in the league in rush yards and 8th in total yards. The 2020 4-11 Eagles were 3rd in the league in YPC and 9th in total yards. You wouldn't be hard-pressed by any means. It's not that uncommon. Hell, the 7-9 2016 Bills led the league in YPC and yards, #1 in both. Take out all of Tyrod's rushing yards and they'd still have been 3rd in the league in runs yards. Another problem, IMO, with your thesis here is that last year's Bills were quite good at running once they got Bates in place the second half of the year. Running and stopping the run are the two least-important facets of the game, with stopping the run being #3 and running being #4. Not that they're totally unimportant. They are not. But less important than passing and stopping the pass? Absolutely.

I don't see this as the media souring on him. They're just reporting a situation which doesn't look great and now hasn't for a couple of years. This is a rational response to what's going on. Belichick has earned a lot of respect and a lot of latitude, but this is their third year post-Brady and things don't look good.

It's really not. But that's life.

No, wait, we've been told on this very board that he's only a slot guy. I expect Kumerow to far out outsnap him on the outside.

Myself, I doubt it. But certainly possible.

Like the first half of the season or so. That's how McDermott tends to handle rookies. Most likely it's how they'll handle Cook as well. By the way, apparently Singletary was also not a guy who needed to "get some work" in the preseason. 12 total carries in his rookie preseason. 10 the next year. And 4 this year. Moss had 8 carries in his rookie preaseason and 7 last year. Yup, I think you guys are onto something. This isn't just something they do. It's a new top-secret ploy for Cook.