Thurman#1

Interesting way to put it in perspective. I hadn't thought of it that way. Nice post.

Picking one guy, one draft pick, with the possible exception of your QB (only if he's elite) and pretending that has more than a small impact on whether you win a Super Bowl is ridiculous. The question is whether he was a good pick. And if you're wondering whether a tactic is smart, you look at whether smart teams use it. From this list, it's clear they do. Correlating draft picks like Mahomes and Brady to Super Bowl wins makes sense. There are very few people who you can say that about. Was Megatron a bad draft pick because he didn't win a Super Bowl? J.J. Watt? Earl Campbell? Dan Fouts? Tony Gonzalez? Bruce Smith? Jim Kelly? Thurman Thomas? Dan Marino? Super Bowl wins are SIMPLY NOT single guy achievements. About 99.5% of guys who win Super Bowls do so because they were drafted by the right team. It's not the other way around. Pretending it is makes zero sense. You judge a draft pick by how well he played. The large majority of that list were damn good picks. They succeeded at significantly higher rates than most first-rounders. It's been said, intelligently, that win-loss record is not a QB stat. That's correct. It's a team stat. There's a reason why the actual name of that stat is "Team Record in Games Started by this QB (Regular Season)." It's not a QB stat. It's also not a WR stat. Or a CB stat. Or an OG stat. It's a team stat. Much less so is Super Bowl wins an individual stat. Again, a team stat.

I do hear you, but I totally disagree. Bates is serviceable, as we saw. But as we also saw last year, you can't count on guys playing at the same level the next year. Feliciano had been pretty good in 2020. He regressed quite a bit last year. So did Daryl Williams, who'd been really good at tackle in 2020, but wasn't the next year. If our top five do play without regression, we've got a pretty solid line. How often does that happen, that all five guys play without regression and without missing a game? And how good is our #6? If one guy goes out, we suddenly see guys moving all around, a lack of continuity and a major drop where the #6 fits in. The way we saw it happen last year. Outside CB2 our lineup looks really good everywhere as long as there is no regression and no injuries. But that's not the way to bet. IMO they have a real need for either a guard/tackle flexible guy or a center/guard flexible guy. Or maybe both. Saffold is on a one-year contract and Morse is aging. IMO at least one of those is a top three need.

Um, no I called it irrelevant because it was irrelevant. Having literally everything to do with drafting an OL in the first round doesn't mean it's therefore relevant. You could say, "The OLs drafted in the first round have all had last names starting in consonants." True or not, that would have been all about drafting OLs in the first, and completely irrelevant. You said, "My wording was lazy. I just don't think taking the 3rd, 4th or 5th best OL that early is smart. " Irrelevant. Whether your OL is the 1st, 3rd, 4th or 5th best OL has zero importance. All that matters is whether or not he's good enough to be picked as BPA where their pick is. The folks who've already been picked are irrelevant to your decision when it's your pick. Only the unpicked prospects matter. If the Bills have a guard evaluated with a grade of 8.1, and no other player above 8.0 is left on their board, it would be completely irrelevant whether before the draft the Bills had that guard as the best OL or the 5th best. If they'd had five OLs ahead of him, with grades of 8.2 to 8.5, and those five are gone, they're as irrelevant as any of the other players who'd already been taken. Completely so. It only matters who's BPA on the board at a position of need.

Dynamic players at high impact positions don't win Super Bowls. That's one factor, of course. There are many others. It's far more complicated than just this cliche above. A ton of other things are as important or more so, such as having a great QB, such as your franchise QB staying uninjured, having a roster that is consistently solid across the board, having players that fit the system, having a good system, continuity, a good strength and conditioning staff, good play callers, depth, and it goes on and on. If you have terrific skill position guys and a weak center and a decent guard whose backup is poor and that guard gets injured, your season is likely going to have great problems regardless of all those good guys at dynamic positions. Even when only roster is considered, it's far more complicated than just getting guys at the positions you're calling dynamic. Arguably our most impactful player outside of Allen last year was Bates. When he came in the improvement was palpable. Imagine if we'd had someone much better at guard right from the beginning. Which is why IOL is a need for the Bills on nearly every list you see.

Your stat shows the opposite. If out of 13 times it happened in ten years, two teams won Super Bowls, that's really really good. That's far above expectations. Only eight teams have won Super Bowls in that time. But the whole idea of examining that bit of data is ridiculous, most especially because the sample size is too small to have any significance. You can't take one draft choice and pretend that's the reason a team won or didn't win the Super Bowl. In the last ten years, maybe - possibly - ten players drafted made a significant difference in teams winning a Super Bowl. Most of them QBs or pass rushers. Maybe 10 guys. Your idea here is ridiculous. What you want to look at is this ... 1) How many guards drafted in the first were good players? And the answer to that is that an awful lot of them were. Probably because it's an easier position to evaluate for college success in the pros among highly talented guys. 2) How many smart teams have made this move? And again, the answer is that a pretty fair number of the teams that did it were smart. It's a smart move ... depending on the situation, of course. If there's a better more impactful guy there, you ought to grab him instead. If there isn't, it's often smart to pick a guard if he's BPA at a position of need. And guard is a position of need for this team.

I agree he might make a move or two, particularly using 6ths or 7ths to move up, something he does very often. But you don't need 8 rookies to make the team. Making the practice squad can be just as useful. Might we lose a guy that way? Sure, it's possible. Also very possible we would not.

Wouldn't it be news? It absolutely would. Because again, he didn't say it was 1st round. That's pure guesswork by folks on here hearing what they want to hear. And yet, it is in fact news, as it's on twitter and there's now a 22 page thread based on nothing but this very undetailed tweet. And if Peter King heard something, he would have been perfectly happy to say that he heard something. He does that all the time. But you said it yourself, he "speculated." That ain't news, it's educated guesswork. And there's nothing wrong with that, but there is something wrong with reading that King guessed, and then, as you did here, saying that he "likely heard something." Again, he was speculating. Again, he had that Giants note in his weekly, "10 Things I Think I Think" section. Not the "Factoids" section or any other. https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/03/21/deshaun-watson-browns-davante-adams-raiders-nfl-fmia-peter-king/?cid=nbcsports He didn't say anything about the Bills being part of that, or at least not in that same article. Nothing. Could you possible be talking about the article by Chris Trapasso mentioning King's speculation and speculates about four possible teams who might fit the bill? Totally without any idea that he had any information on it? Titled "Exploring first-round trades Giants could make to gain extra draft capital"? Subtitled, "The Giants have two first-round picks, could they actually move one?" https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/news/2022-nfl-draft-exploring-first-round-trades-giants-could-make-to-gain-extra-draft-capital/ In that article, Trapasso says this, "The Giants are starting a new era with coach Brian Daboll and GM Joe Schoen, and with the regime change comes unpredictability as to how the G-Men will operate in the draft. They appear to be ready to ride with quarterback Daniel Jones for at least one more season. We don't know much else." And this. "Let's examine four possible trades the Giants could make on the evening of April 28th." Nothing else. Nothing about any source. He's trying to put together a list of his own, of teams that could possibly be interested IF the Giants are actually interested. There's nothing here. Again, since many seem to have missed this, Zig Fracassi, the guy who put out the tweet did NOT say the trade he referred to would/could be in the 1st round. The folks here assuming that it must be about the first round are suffering from confirmation bias. If he'd meant it about the first round specifically, he could have virtually guaranteed his tweet would get a ton more attention, retweets and so on by mentioning the round. He did NOT.

No, that's a terrible perspective to see it from. Here's one that's much clearer. The ball is obscuring the official's face. Rousseau isn't even in the picture. It's only allowing me to post tiny PNGs, but here's a wider but shorter version of the same photo, screenshotted off my International GamePass video, in a side angle shot. If you could see the whole screen, you'd understand it's really really obvious nobody is even near the ball. Rousseau didn't even get close.

I also have a vague memory of him saying something like this. What he essentially meant - if I remember right - was that consistency is something he needed to work on and upgrade, that all great QBs have to have this. That great ones have to minimize bad performances.

Yup. Wildly unlikely. And as I'm sure many have noted, the original Fracassi tweet doesn't ever refer to the 1st round. The could be thinking of - for example - moving Moss to move up in the 4th.

Yeah. Doesn't seem this retweet is necessarily even about this. That's certainly one explanation, but there are plenty of equally reasonable others. IMO he could be back later depending on price and how the roster looks.

This had thought behind it. The ones that were shut down were mostly someone having a vagrant thought shoot through his mind and expressing it, generally a thought that had been expressed before many times, often nothing more than one or two sentences along the lines of "I like this" or "we should do that." This thread is a ton more thoughtful and has, as Hap has said several times, more substrate for discussion, than many of those other, far poorer threads.

Those are certainly legitimate opinions.

OL might be off the table for you folks. Doesn't mean it's off the table for Beane. Likely it's not. Guard could very easily be the pick, if they like one of the two or three or at absolute most four guards this year who appear to be good enough to be considered BPA at #25: Penning if they think he could transition to guard, Kenyon Green, Zion Johnson, and maybe Kinnard if they have him that high. Probably they think one or two of those might be a possible BPA, a guard and a fit with the kind of player they want there. They might not. Equally, they might. WR, CB, IOL and DL will probably be the positions they will consider to be positions of need at this point and reasonable first round considerations. Later, other positions will also be considered, IMO.

Regardless of who said what, the league is absolutely not about stacking offense and offensive playmakers. It's about playmakers at QB, and having a few others, on both sides of the ball. It's about eliminating major holes by putting together a roster with consistent talent. It's not about depth, until it is, and at that point, depth is huge. And it's about system fit and system resiliency. As noted above, the Rams didn't have a great offense. Both sides of the ball are big.

Six snaps on offense is "a lot of trust"? His 40 snaps on STs shows a bit more faith, but six snaps on offense shows all but nothing. I'm hopeful, but you can't say there's no need for anyone else based on six snaps, no rushes and no targets. Hardman played in all 16 games his rookie year and put up 538 yards. Their WR corps was also stacked, with Tyreek, Sammy Watkins, Demarcus Robinson, and Byron Pringle. I think it would indeed be a stretch to compare the two. Love his speed. If he figures out kick returns, I think he could be excellent, but so far he hasn't. Seems like a great guy, and sometimes players develop a lot. Maybe, but it just has not shown so far at the pro level.

I find that real hard to imagine. I suppose anything's possible. But before the draft a team whose modus operandi is filling all their holes before the draft is going to open up new holes? Yeah, I won't be holding my breath on that one.

A long snapper? In no way. Nobody thinks that, nobody. You know that for an unquestioned fact by comparing salaries for long-snappers to guards and by comparing where long-snappers get picked in the draft and comparing that as well. There's no comparison. A guard protects your QB on every single pass play and your RB on every single run play. It's a crucial piece (they all are) in making your offense work well. At #25, you aren't likely to fill any position with an all-star. Top twelve or so, your odds might be pretty decent. Around #25 you're successful if you get a long-time starter who plays well above-average These are the #25 picks back to 2000: Travis Etienne, Brandon Aiyuk, Marquise Brown, Hayden Hurst, Jabrill Peppers, Artie Burns, Shaq Thompson, Jason Verrett, Xavier Rhodes, Dont'a Hightower, James Carpenter, Tim Tebow, Vontae Davis, Mike Jenkins, Jon Beason, Santonio Holmes, Jason Campbell, Ahmad Carroll, William Joseph, Charles Grant, Freddie Mitchell, and Chris Hovan. That's the rough spectrum you're probably looking at. There are a few guys there who are/were really able to play. A bunch of good players, and some absolute dogs. If you compare your guard at #25 to an imaginary group of guys playing "like an All-Star," the guard looks terrible. But there aren't a whole lot of all-stars in that group up above. Comparing a guard playing very good ball and protecting Allen and allowing the run game to be better and to take pressure off Allen compared to those guys the comparison is actually pretty reasonable. The value a guy brings is how much better he helps the whole team, the whole system, to play. Guards can help a lot.

I love that they thought about it. I trust them to make good decisions at a high rate as they do.

I think Thuney's hit has a bit to do with their not having more under the cap next year. Not much, though. Next year he is going to be an $8.1M hit. There isn't the slightest doubt he's worth that. I also think Thuney also has a lot to do with Mahomes' being healthy right now. Mahomes' $35M cap hit had an awful lot more to do with Tyreek Hill not being there than Thuney's $8.1M. It's worth it for Thuney. And that the Chiefs probably just love Tyreek but had a max they wanted to give him, and Tyreek didn't want to give a discount for the hometown team. The reason they aren't bringing back their WR is likely that they didn't want to give him $120M over four years with $72.2M guaranteed. Think he'll have his usual massive impact in Miami with Tua throwing to him as he did last year with Mahomes? I don't. The Chiefs are playing moneyball. It's smart. And so was paying to keep Mahomes healthy and unpestered. And yes, you can find adequate guards for cheap. They won't play as well. You can find adequate guys for cheaper at every position. You will pay a price in efficiency. That's why you take the BPA at a position of need. (IMO in no order: WR, CB, IOL, DLk I'm NOT saying we should draft a guard. I absolutely AM saying that we should strongly consider doing so (and will strongly consider it) if he is the BPA on their board. Keeping Josh Allen unmolested is huge, as is helping keep a real run game going to take some of the pressure off Allen's shoulders.

Great interior linemen absolutely change games. Not least by not allowing your QB to be injured or consistently rushed. And plugging a single spot in a unit and moving it from below average to well above average ... that is game-changing. When people say game-changing, they typically mean people who make the play at the ball. And that's the easy to observe guy, said to have "made the play," but that's nonsense. The play is made by eleven guys. It would not have been made if an OL had let a rusher past who put Allen in the hospital. What people mean by game-changing plays is flashy plays, at the point of contact, generally on the ball. Those are cool plays. But anyone who thinks that one guy made any play whatsoever is missing the point. Those should be called something else, maybe splash plays or highlight reel plays. Game-changing plays are by no means limited to splash or highlight reel plays. The biggest game-changers for the Bills were probably Josh Allen, Ryan Bates (when he was plugged in, the increase in offensive efficiency was instantly noticeable, it was consistent and long-lasting. He was the biggest game-changer on the Bills last year, IMO), and whoever replaced him (guys like Dane Jackson did OK, but the defense simply wasn't the same. In a bad way, Jackson was a game-changer, particularly against teams with a number of quality receivers such as the Chiefs.) If we'd had a better CB3, that guy would have been a major game changer even though nobody would really have noticed him. A really good functional line has a massive impact on offensive function. And one guy can absolutely have an OL take a major leap, as we saw with Bates. And when you draft you don't get to choose who's available to you. You don't get to say, "OK, I'll take the Quenton Nelson calibre wide receiver / pass rusher / CB." If you did say that at #25, the answer is likely to be, "He's on the roster of the team that drafted 8th." You take the guy who's as close as you can find to Quenton Nelson calibre (BPA) at a position of need. And this year, IOL is absolutely a position of need.

I don't like what he said. He's certainly right that we have a right to be selfish or make unpopular stands about things. It's within our rights ... but that will carry consequences in how people think about you. But you don't hear people criticizing the other Bills who didn't get the shot much. They criticize two, Beasley for constantly going on about it even during the season, and Lotulelei who insisted on not getting vaccinated and then having Covid make him miss a couple of weeks and then drastically reduce his effectiveness the rest of the year. There were apparently five guys who were unvaccinated. Did any others get a ton of flack? Did the other people who caught Covid, vaxed or not, get flack? Beasley's insistence on bringing the focus back to Covid and his beliefs again and again was a huge majority of the reason he was caught in a bit of an SNS maelstrom.

You can believe it, but there's no evidence for it that I've seen. I might have missed it. Did anyone say this, on the player or the team side? That's an honest question. Can anyone link something?

Every team in the league used analytics. Some more than others, but most used them at least a fair amount. And nearly all used it on accept/defer decisions. How many teams deferred when they won the coin toss at the beginning of games? 251:25. That's analytics. And a lot of the 25 were because of the wind. It'll be the same here, IMO. We'll see the ratio tip quite a bit to one side or the other. IMO it'll be to deferring. Oh, and as for teams that use analytics a lot not making the playoffs, take a look at these articles about how the Rams use analytics a lot. https://ramblinfan.com/2021/04/08/la-rams-data-analytics-continues-to-advance-each-year/ https://sporttechie.com/its-the-rams-and-bengals-in-the-super-bowl-and-may-the-best-data-science-win https://www.pacific.edu/pacific-newsroom/alumnas-work-analytics-helps-rams-win-super-bowl#:~:text=Bailey serves as manager of,and game preparation and strategy. https://ramblinfan.com/2021/04/11/la-rams-statistician-sarah-bailey-views-data-analytics/ And I may be wrong, but I seem to remember the Rams making the playoffs last year.