Thurman#1

Couldn't know it would mean a Super Bowl. So basically, no. It's a bad move. But if Allen were injured for the year, sure.

We get it. My God, do we get it! How could we avoid getting it when you folks relentlessly thread-nap again and again about your obsession. Thing is, no matter how you feel about Edmunds, the Bills love him. Not to mention that the Giants are trying to cut salary and Edmunds will cost $13M this year. Probability roughly zero. Anyway, Bradberry $13.4M seems unlikely to appeal to the Bills. They've generally tried to keep maybe one expensive good CB (even in Carolina) and keep costs down there outside of that guy. Yeah, they could re-structure, but it doesn't really fit their M.O. I could be wrong, clearly, but I think they won't seriously consider him.

If she's a supermodel, I'm Mr. Universe and a megastar. Certainly a very attractive woman, though.

That is a wild overstatement, terrible all 3 years. Wildly exaggerated. They haven't been good enough. But they have been quite good at pass blocking for most of the past three years. Run problems, yes, at various levels and various times. An awful lot seems to come from injuries, from the unexplained regression of Williams and generally from problems interrupting a consistent lineup And Covid has caused a lot of up and down, with Dion and one or two others. They've generally been average to slightly above, with some dips below that as replacements were played and above that at times as they seemed to find consistency at times. Don't think they can block it, Hap, as his contract ended as the season did. According to these guys the Bills at one point tried to extend him and he refused that. Edit: Ah, you posted yourself that his contract was up, per Graham. The Air Raid guys report that he'd been offered an extension, though I didn't hear them saying exactly when that happened, though it sounds like they were talking about some time ago.

I love the way you arrange that. If the defense held the offense to very few points early then it doesn't count because the game wasn't contested. That's not a legit way to look at the defense's performance. It's a way to find the worst possible perspective on it. The defense played very well in most games. There were certainly a few exceptions, and they should be blamed for those. That Colts game was abysmal. But overall they played really well this year, including against pretty solid offenses An awful first half against the Bucs but a great second half. The offense had some awful games too and somehow nobody wants to talk about that. DVOA adjusts for strength of schedule and the Bills D ranked very high there. Almost as nutty as the fire McDermott fruitcakes, one of whom is also in this thread.

I thought the same thing about being worried that Hill being back there, but in fact, I found out a couple of days ago that he wasn't. He was on the sidelines.

Depends if you count Anthony Lynn. He was our interim head coach for a few weeks near the end of the season before he left, so it's arguable. 2017.

He also wanted "not the highest paid." And for good reason. IMO he's not getting all those together, high-producing, young, healthy and not to expensive don't tend to go together all at the same time. Oh, red is negative figures on Overthecap? Weird that they wouldn't just use the minus sign, but whatever. Even worse, then, if both of them have the Bills in negative figures. It's just that I keep seeing people saying the Bills have $10M available. At least twice so far in this thread alone. I don't know where they're getting that, but they oughta consider holding their horses. I love Colorado, by the way. If I ever move back to the states, that's where I'd go. My parents used to live up in Leadville, saw Mt. Elbert out the kitchen window every day. Love me some Colorado.

$10M? Spotrac has us in the negative numbers, at -$1.3M, though I think they haven't officially rolled over our money from last year yet. Overthecap has us at $4.5M, though I think they have just assumed the rollover. I wish we had $10M. You're right that we will release some guys and restructure a few, but they don't go overboard on that, as we know from past years. And you're right that we'll without a doubt bring back a bunch of our own FAs which will bring the totals back down.

Don't think we're going to be able to realistically afford those guys. Jackson and Chandler Jones? Wildly unlikely, is my guess.

No. Your post illustrates a lot of the problem. You ask if we can defend the modern-day TE, and then spend the whole post talking only about defending them on pass plays. The problem is that they can go out but the best ones are also really good blockers, on both pass and run plays, and that the guys who can cover them on pass plays mostly can't even begin to block them. They don't have the size. You can take a TE out of the play in coverage, using either a tremendous coverage guy or doubling him. But then he'll punch a hole in your run coverage, or help neuter one of your best edge rushers. Or the good ones will. Any really athletic player at any position is going to create a problem, even for a good defense.

I'd strongly argue whether McGahee was a steal or even a good pick where selected. If you sit out your first year, you'd better perform sensationally when you play. For those who don't remember, he averaged 3.8, 3.8 and 4.0 YPC his three years in Buffalo. After sitting for a year from that injury. Yeah we did not have a good OL, particularly in the last two of those three years. But while he developed into a guy who could stand up to a lot of carries, he was never a guy teams game-planned for. If he'd been a 3rd rounder, he'd have been a really good value. As a first rounder, a good player but not worth the pick. A career YPC of 4.0. A tough guy, not someone who struck fear in a lot of defensive hearts. He was the 23rd pick in 2003. Here are all of the RBs who've been picked at #23 or higher: 2005 #2 Ronnie Brown 2005 #4 Cedric Benson 2005 #5 Cadillac Williams 2006 #2 Reggie Bush 2006 #21 Laurence Maroney 2007 #7 Adrian Peterson 2007 #12 Marshawn Lynch 2008 #4 Darren McFadden 2008 #13 Jonathan Stewart 2008 #22 Felix Jones 2008 #23 Rashard Mendenhall 2009 #12 Knowshon Moreno 2010 #9 C.J. Spiller 2010 #12 Ryan Mathews 2012 #3 Trent Richardson 2015 #10 Todd Gurley 2015 #15 Melvin Gordon 2016 #4 Ezekiel Elliott 2017 #4 Leonard Fournette 2017 #8 Christian McCaffrey 2018 #2 Saquon Barkley And that's it. Nobody above #23 since 2018. As a group, that is not a history of good drafting. A few really good ones, but that's not how it leans overall. And while McGahee would probably be above the midline of this group, that says more about how bad the group is than how good McGahee was. That pick was Donahoe trying to show how smart he was, and failing.

Fair enough question, but here's another ... would he have been better if he hadn't hurt his knee? Was he ever as electric in the pros as he was at Miami? Here's a Miami highlight reel. Does any of those plays look familiar from his time in Buffalo or the rest of the league? That was an awful pick for the Bills, awful, especially as they already had Travis Henry. I would support the Jameson pick if the doctors are OK with it, but that McGahee pick was bad.

The penalty came before the TD. They would have had to call back the TD and back them up. Would probably have worked out in KC's favor. A minute left in the game and they have the ball on the 15 - 25. Neither defense was capable of stopping either offense at that point. They'd have run three or four runs and burnt more and maybe nearly all the time off the clock before scoring. The penalty would have been all out of proportion to the infraction. They made the right call there, though the fine should have been bigger. Even he would have sat up after getting a fine for $50K.

Yeah. I think that's why it wasn't called. They might have thrown it if doing so wouldn't have had a cataclysmic effect on the game. Delay of game, maybe. But those end zone shows - while immensely stupid - aren't taunts they're celebrations and not aimed at one guy besides.

No, he's not misreading anything. Yes, the rules favor the offense. That's why scoring is up. But the game is still about getting the highest score and that's accomplished two ways, by scoring more and by making the other guy score less. Go through recent SB winners and you'll find a big majority of good defenses. Offenses too. What you tend to find is balance.

While I understand your analysis, I think it's not really correct on Brady. They did spend less resources on WR than most. Equally, they emphasized TE a great deal. Which was really smart since TEs were an awful lot cheaper than WRs back then. Still cheaper but not as much so. But Terry Glenn was a damn good receiver for the Pats. And NE strongly stressed slot WRs through the years as well - again cheaper - and had terrific ones in Welker and Edelman. IMO your question is interesting but the answer is no. Brady was a different kind of QB. His game was accuracy and consistency. He could throw the long ball, but that wasn't really his game. Allen is a different kind of QB, though he's worked on consistency and accuracy and has become damn good at it. Brady's game in NE was mostly about sustaining drives, about scheme to get guys open, and about the short and mid-range game. Allen terrifies teams with the constant specter of the long ball. His game is about as devastating as Brady's even at his peak, but it's different, and has different needs. Also, the Pats ran the ball a lot more than we appear to want to, stressing defenses with unpredictability.

Oh, please, this is nonsense. It wasn't as simple as a cover 2 shell. That's why it gave Andy Reid and the Chiefs the same massive problems it gave the Bills, and for about the same length of time. Arguing that the later season explosion was only on Allen is pure confirmation bias. If it were only Allen, how come he didn't do the same earlier in the season? He was the QB then too and having problems then too. You want to believe that it was Allen, not Daboll, so even though it's absent any evidence, you just believe it.

No. I can't imagine any team genuinely believing one guy would be the best head coaching candidate they've seen, and then turn him down because hiring him would mean a rival would get two 3rd round comp picks.

Simply untrue. He has indeed "coached in the NFL for many years," but it's just not true that his first great offense happened the last two years. The 2004 Pats offense was excellent, and same with 2006. Same with all four years of his second stint with the Pats in 2013 - 2016, terrific. You did say "NFL," so we can leave the terrific Alabama offense out, but they were in fact great. In 2008, Daboll was on the Jets the year Favre played with them and that offense was very good indeed. That's seven really good offenses he's served with in the NFL. Now, you might say, "yeah, but he wasn't OC on those." Fair enough, but it was you who set out the original boundaries here, not me. If you wanted to gerrymander out the rest of his career and only look at his years as OC, you shouldn't have said, "He's coached in the NFL for many years and his first great offense ..." He'd only been an OC for four years in the NFL before he joined the Bills.

Yeah, but I don't think this will be a surprise to him. 🙂

4.7 YPC for his career. He is not average and certainly not borderline average. He's also not elite or even close. But he's genuinely good. And that's nonsense that most great QBs "weren't able to get over the hump without a great running back." The fact is, some did and some didn't. But the more the rules have changed to favor the passing game, the more SB winners have not needed a great running back. Ronald Jones Jr./ Fournette Damine Williams / LeSean McCoy Sony Michel LeGarrette Blount LeGarrette Blount CJ Anderson / Ronnie Hillman LeGarrette Blount/ Shane Vereen, Stevan Ridley / Jonas Gray (with Gray as their leading rusher) Marshawn Lynch Ray Rice Ahmad Bradshaw / Brandon Jacobs Brandon Jackson / James Starks Mike Bell / Pierre Thomas / Reggie Bush (390 yards) Those are the significant RBs in the last 12 SB winners. Beyond Lynch and probably Rice before the incident, you've got a lot of decent to good RBs there. And yet Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Peyton and the others managed to get over the hump.

Yes. We don't need to spend higher-level resources on RB. An RB who they don't want to run an awful lot. Wouldn't be surprised to see a low-level FA or a mid-rounder used for the future and for competition at #2, though.

I get that it's way more satisfying to grab a pitchfork and join the mob. But we don't know what happened there or who was to blame. The idea that 13 seconds - bad as it was - shows that McDermott is stupid, well it's flat-out ridiculous. Not that all is sunshine and roses and we can be absolutely sure we'll get a sensational OC. But we've got a smart guy with a lot more experience than he had last time making the decision. And the job is a ton more attractive than it was when he hired Dennison. And the next year he hired Daboll.

Disagree. If they actually bring in a real offensive line, I think he's got a chance to become good.