Thurman#1

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.

This'n. Hopefully the new guy will do a great job. But there's likely to be adjustment, which will take time. And some new hires fail. Some do terrific, but some fail. Daboll's been terrific. The tendency for fans is to give the QB credit for the good stuff and blame the OC for the bad stuff. That's how it has worked here, and Daboll has caught a lot of unwarranted crap over it.

You said the thinnest hair and I thought at first it was a moustache comment. Now, I gotcha. Yeah, I worry about him wearing down over the long run. And all three of them are really promising.

Smart to be exhaustive about the process on this decision.

Good lord, the sensitivity from so many on this. The article's reasonable. Except for Brugler and Mueller, these guys are anonymous. So their opinions about him on draft day have nothing to do with this article. Their identities and their draft day opinions are unknown. No need for them to hide opinions or twist them. They make no claims, and for all we know they might have been huge Allen fans on draft day. Or not. You have no idea whether many of these guys missed on Allen. Beside the point, though. The question is simply what they would want now. I'm with eball as to wondering how anyone could rank Allen third. Three out of seven ranked him first, though. And ranking him 2nd if you really really love Burrow doesn't seem unfair to me, though I'd absolutely rank him 1st out of this group. But Burrow especially looks like he might be a very good one down the road, and this is only Burrow's sophomore year. All three, really, but Allen and Burrow particularly look terrific.

Yes, it was big. Wasn't a stupid outside run, though, anymore than the outside run on which he got the 4th down touchdown. It was an unsuccessful outside run. IMO the two punts on shortish 4th downs are what stick out to me. Helluva game. And I still feel awful.

Sigh. *shakes head, thinks of many stupid things his six year-old has done*

If he stays, it'll be a good thing for us. Frazier is a terrific coach. Exactly.

Luckily for us, they already have figured a way to make it work cap-wise. That way being to be pretty conservative with their cap, which will mean that after the Covid cap drop they will again have decent amounts of money to spend next year. The reason you don't go all in is that you screw yourself over the long term. The teams that do go all in end up never ever going over the cap, but they also end up not being able to afford guys they need, and it goes on for years. They'll get one or two guys, but always have to leave a few holes. We don't need to worry. Beane gets it and is conservative without being completely unswerving. If it hadn't been for the Covid revenue failure, we'd never have been close to the level we're at now. Yup. Matthieu, Ingram, Ward and Schwartz are not going to be easy to replace with JAGs. A few others they'd want to keep if they can. Schwartz might be the one of those four who comes back cheapest because of his injuries. He'd be a great piece for them to have even if he's not starting.

Get used to it. He likes it, and it makes sense. Did we have a massive letdown? Yeah. Was the rotation the reason for that? No particular reason to think so. They didn't look exhausted so much as frustrated that whenever a guy or two got close, Mahomes had the transcendent talent to be able to run away. Saying "the rotation did them a lot of good in that 4th quarter" is just ridiculous logic. It was a loss. Nothing did them a lot of good in that 4th quarter. Might as well say that having Oliver didn't do them a lot of good then so we should get rid of him and every single other person on the defense. None of them did a lot of good there. That doesn't mean the problem is on whichever group or guy of them you are feeling like blaming.

Thing is ... it really very much IS like Edmunds is a good player. Very good. That ain't reality saying otherwise, it's people who think they're way smarter than McDermott. Plenty of fans don't like the guy's playing style. And he certainly isn't elite or top five or anything. Just very good and an excellent fit for the McDermott defense. They love the guy.

Yeah, hard to imagine them doing otherwise.

Jones signed last year for $15M a year. The Bills should have more than $3M available under the cap after they roll over last year's free space. I see no problem. Yes. Dammit.

Y'know, I'm no Blaise Pascal, but looking at your numbers, I'd say it was both. If you go by his average in 2019 and 2020 and compare it to his 2021 numbers, he lost about 33% in before the catch and about 20% in after the catch. Both of those are absolutely significant.

First, thanks for posing this question. It's only been asked here probably ten or fifteen thousand times here in the last year or two. And second thanks for pointing out how the Chiefs just plain out-physicalled our soft ... oh, wait, they actually didn't. If anything they outran them. Well, thanks then, for ... what? for making an effort, unsuccessful though it was.

Love the guy. Probably too expensive this year.

Wouldn't mind that at all.