Thurman#1

Yeah, they coped pretty well, but with Tre in this is a much tougher team for offenses to deal with.

Oh, my God, that's funny. Too long, Marv, but I appreciate the time and effort.

Fair enough. But of course, there is also a real chance that he absolutely does dress and play every game. Dunno which is more likely. We'll have to see. My guess is it's somewhere between those two.

Sure, yeah, guesses can be considered reality if you're not really sure what reality is.

Don't expect that from Phillips. You'll be disappointed. He got very lucky that year. He ran through holes untouched on a very large percentage of his sacks. His pressure percentage was fairly unimpressive. He just got sacks on a historically excellent percentage of his pressures. Like a better than Von Miller kind of a percentage. He got lucky. But he was still a pretty solid player even when he wasn't getting lucky. That's what they are looking forward to. The statisticians all told us it was a fluke and while he was a good player he wouldn't get that kind of a year for sacks again. He didn't. Both before and since that year he got a pretty normal percentage of sacks per pressure.

Schobel totalled 78 sacks. Jerry 58. Now, I'm no Blaise Pascal, but that doesn't seem to subtract down to 55. Just sayin'. But Schobel really was good.

And I'm saying 9/11 was an American government plot. and that the moon is made of green cheese. Stuff happens. He might retire, there were rumors he was considering it this off-season. He also might get a contract somewhere. As usual, we'll have to see.

Yes. And yet Phil Hansen was no better than Hughes. Hansen also had zero All-Pros and zero Pro Bowls. My guess is that Hughes is close but not quite good enough. But the same is true of Hansen, IMO. The two were pretty close in sacks, but there wasn't any Bruce Smith on the other side drawing attention away from Jerry. Nor a Cornelius Bennett rushing from outside Hughes. Hansen was a better run defender Denmark it down that he could be back from them Netherlands in Texas. Myself, I think it ain't a bit Faroe. Islands of civilization are hard to find in Texas.

Not at all. He'd lost a step but was still very impactful. I wish him the absolute best of luck. A great Bill and a fine person.

I could be wrong, but I believe that when he said Whaley and Brandon were the main reason we sucked for 20 years, he was being sarcastic. GM is absolutely part of the mix in terms of culture. He brings in the kind of players that the coach wants. And if that includes culture guys, process guys, the GM can either succeed or botch bringing in the right kind of guys. Beane has killed it. Whaley was OK but his big shot was Sammy Watkins, who kind of looked OK for a while but very much did not prove a process guy.

Most of the fine players who were on those Whaley teams were actually brought in during Nix's term as GM. The offense wasn't that good, but the defense really was ... almost every one of those defensive guys were brought in under Nix. And the salary cap really was a disaster for a team that produced no playoff seasons. Agreed that the Rex decision appears to have been the consensus. But IMO the Pegulas would have listened if Whaley had said, "Look, I can't work with this guy. He puts on a great show but I don't see substance there," or something along those lines. He didn't.

No, the goal is NOT to be all in for a SB this year. How many times does Beane need to say this? He said it for probably the two-dozenth time two weeks ago in the post-draft PC. He doesn't want to screw next season for the sake of this one. He wants to be consistently competitive for the next ten to twelve years. And you're right that the space can be made easily, just as it's true that the gambling addict who's far far underwater can find a way to get a new credit card and find a few thousand more to throw away. Doesn't mean - in either case - that it SHOULD be done. But yes, it can be done. They're fine at CB. Again, they could get better, of course. But in the cap condition they're in now, this simply isn't a good idea.

Yup.

First, percentages between years can't be exactly compared. Maybe he was attempting harder kicks one year. Second, a 5% difference on more than 30 field goals isn't one field goal, it's between one and two. Third, we can't know which miss/misses were caused by holder problems. Was it the one in the KC game in 2020 where we lost by 9. In that game we would have been behind by 6 instead of 9 when we got the ball back with 1:56 to play. Needing a drive AND an onside kick and a field goal, we'd have had a much much better shot at a win if we'd made that FG earlier. Instead of having to throw the low percentage deep ball to Beasley that was intercepted, there was plenty of time to march slowly down the field. There's an extremely good argument that lost field goal lost the game for us. It wasn't the only thing that lost the game, but if we'd made it, we'd have been in it with a real chance at the end. Was that one of the ones he missed because of the holder?

Yes, but as pointed out, the most important thing is correctly hold on FG kicks. This suffers when another guy is used. Practice time goes down a lot. There's a reason every team in the league does this.

Nah. Baker doesn't "blow." He's just not a top ten guy and hasn't showed he can get to that level of play consistently. For this year only I'd pick Baker. For the rest of their careers, Wilson. That's a bit wacky, IMO.

As reported in the story, the reason he wasn't traded was that Carolina wouldn't pay a big chunk of Baker's salary, and Cleveland wouldn't pay a big chunk of it to see him play in Carolina. They'd like to trade him. The contract makes it very difficult.

It's not the player that teams are considering bringing aboard. It's the player but also the contract, the social media, the changes in the locker room. The whole package. If it were only the player he'd be on a roster by now.

He did. That really is a very fair observation. But plenty of folks respond to terrible events by working harder, by taking better control over what they do. Still, you make a great point. I should try to better understand the guy.

I had to google it. Reading this it wasn't clear if he was visiting or playing. He's trying out. At 32, as a player who lost his drive as a younger more capable guy, I doubt it'll work. Not impossible, though, if he's willing to accept a much much lower level of contract than he's used to. If nothing else, he'd make a good lesson for the rest of the team. Here's a guy who had All Pro talent and frittered it away.

That's all the info Beane gave. The writer couldn't just make up some texts 'cause it would fit his story. And from what Beane said, rueful would have done just as well to describe the texts as angry or upset.

... that we were able to find without access to terrific database sites with this info.

Ross Cockrell 29 7/8 Troy Hill 29 1/2 Avonte Maddox 29 1/2

Yeah, that thing about "STILL don't have a starter"? It's unreal, alright. Also known as completely wrong. They don't have a bellcow. But they've got two and arguably three guys plenty good enough to start.

He could blame who everyone else has ... nobody, we don't want to go into specifics. This was a high character move.