Thurman#1

There are a few nutballs out there. Always. On any subject. So far his drafting record has been very good. Not great but very good. Particularly if you throw out the 2017 draft when Beane wasn't here yet, we've only had one draft class that has been here three years and can thus be properly evaluated. And that class was terrific, though they had an advantage from having so many extra picks acquired in the search to find a QB allowing tradeups. The next year, even with Ford not looking good right now, is a good class, with Oliver and Knox looking like good and great picks, Singletary looking like a solid third-rounder and Jaquan Johnson, Darryl Johnson and Tommy Sweeney all looking like real bargains. And we hae only seen two years out of those guys, there's still meat on the bone. Same with more recent classes.

Yup. No tomato cans in the playoffs. When the Jets, Jags and Texans play at home they're still likely to lose. Yes. That. It makes a real, perceptible, very statistically significant difference.

True. They might not ever have a better chance than this year. There is no particular reason to think that's true, but as with most things, it's possible. We might not ever have a better chance than this year. One way to greatly increase the chances that that comes true and we don't ever have a better chance ... is to ***** up the cap. Luckily, Beane knows this even if many fans don't.

Righyt before that play he told them to stay in their lanes and he told them to watch for a trick play or a lateral. It wasn't his fault.

Yeah, the wife's cutting onions. Really a great player.

Yes, Scott. That's correct. This is not a one-year window. We could compete for championships for a decade ... if we don't do anything too stupid with the cap.

RB isn't a big need. G/CB would be great. If we get a good pass rusher, it will probably be from developing him rather than trading for him. Cap is an issue. Yeah, we could fit someone by kicking cans, but they are already down to $15M next year. They don't need to lower that figure any.

You can't reasonably blame him for changing a W to an L. There were plays made by about every guy on the team that could have turned things around, which is how it generally is in a loss. He's been a really good pickup. The reason he's jumped ahead of those guys is that he's better. Upgrading a position is a good thing. It's confusing. He was a beast at RT last year, but he just wasn't playing all that well there this year.

The answer to that question would be, "Really good." People put up poor arguments criticizing good people, good things and good play all the time. Scapegoating is a common human behavior. This is the internet. The fact that people have picked some guy to scapegoat says nothing about that player. Good and bad players have both been scapegoated a million times on the internet and just in life. What says something about that football player are things like how well he plays, how many pro bowls he makes, whether his team picks up his 5th year option, what kind of contract he eventually gets, whether his teammates/coaches make him a captain, things like that.

You're cracking me up, seriously. There's been a ton of football talk in what I said. And if you were in your backyard telling me to stay out or what to do there, I'd really pay attention. But this is a public forum. Not your backyard. If you don't like that, I'd suggest you don't post. If I went to a public park and some doofus said I wasn't welcome there according to him, I'd give his point zero attention. You're making the same argument. You're trying to make conclusions based on incomplete information. And then telling me that when I look at the All-22 and therefore have all of what you only have part of, that my conclusions don't make sense. This is a ridiculous argument, completely specious. And by the way, pointing out the shortcomings in your method is not an ad hominem argument. It might feel like one, but it is not a personal attack. In the posts above I've never attacked you. I've questioned your method and disagreed with some of your conclusions. That's not ad hominem. Whereas what you have here, including the quote from the great John Cleese, is in large part an ad hominem attack.

I see this seems to be the thread designated for straw man arguments. So rather than answer, let me just point out where you did that. Could you just quickly point out in my post where I said that "on 4th and 1 the Bills don't setup a defense to defend it"? Once you point out where I made this argument, we can continue our discussion..

Yeah, um, if you want to help the OP keep something on topic, that's great. But if you want to leave a message for him, maybe next time don't put it in a reply to a post by me. And I guess since you're apparently operating under the impression that a defense that has subbed out an LB for a 345 pound extra NT and greatly compressed their formation filling each of the central three gaps with a run stuffer, that that defense is not very well-prepared for a QB sneak, you're right, we probably have nothing further to discuss. And yet ... you've missed the point again. Nobody is trying to say that no team is ever prepared for a QB sneak on fourth and short. So you're using a strawman argument. The argument you're pretending I used is indeed nonsensical. Unfortunately, I never said that no teams were prepared. Unfortunately for people making your argument, my argument makes a ton of sense. Yes, there are plenty of times, a majority in fact, when defenses facing 4th and shorts don't prepare for sneaks anywhere near as well as the Titans did on that play. In fact, on around 60 -70% of Allen's successful sneaks for the Bills, the defense left one of the 1-gaps on either side of the center unmanned. One of those gaps is unmanned in ordinary defensive alignments. On very few ordinary football plays do you see teams line up with two 1-techs. And yet that is exactly what the Titans did. The main reason sneaks are successful at a high rate is that an awful lot of them are run with no defender directly in the one of the center-guard gaps. The Titans said, "We're not going to let you run a sneak, we're willing to weaken our defense elsewhere to make sure you don't run a sneak successfully." And the Bills ran a sneak anyway. It was a low-percentage play, far lower than most sneaks run against more unprepared personnel groups and alignments.

Oh, please. This argument is complete nonsense. The old "we don't know what his assignment is on any play, so you can't grade him well" pile of phlegm. That's nonsense. First of all, if nobody can grade a guy, then why are you doing it? In this thread, or anywhere? Your entire thread here is based on the methodology you decided on and implemented and are now trying to back up and criticize, which is watching film and drawing conclusions. Of course you can grade a guy, and extremely effectively, watching tape. Yes, there will be a few plays where you're not sure. But yes most of it is very very obvious. Not before the fact, of course. That's why coaches get paid a lot of money, the other parts of their job are much much harder than watching tape and figuring out what it shows. The problem isn't that you can't watch film and figure out what the player was supposed to do. You can. With high degree of accuracy. The problem is that you're trying to do that on a lot of plays where you can't see the guy for large amounts of the play. A problem I don't have. You're basing your conclusions on incomplete information. I'm not. You say that if I don't like your posts, I shouldn't read 'em. Yeah, well, how about if you don't like people making legitimate criticisms of your posts maybe you shouldn't write them. Your methodology has a major flaw, one you acknowledge. When you post here, accept that some will criticize. Unfortunately, some might have excellent points. Because of the limitations you've chosen to work under, you're working with incomplete information. I only looked at one play, your first haterz play, and your take didn't make sense. I'm sure you get it right on some plays too. But going a clear 0 for 1 on the first one said enough for me.

I've made it very clear, again and again what I'm saying. Including in this thread. But to repeat for the thousandth time ... I'm saying - correctly - that every 1 yard sneak is different. That depending on how the defense is set up - and other aspects of the situation - that the chances of success are either low, medium or high. And that since that defense was specifically set up to stop a quarterback sneak, with players who were excellent choices for stopping the sneak deployed in a manner well-calculated to stop the QB sneak that yes, absolutely ... ... in that situation, yes, the QB sneak for less than a yard was a low percentage play. There are indeed some situations where a QB sneak is a high percentage play. This was not one of those situations. As for giving me a video labelled "Edmunds" with no other idea what you think it shows, I've already watched the game, and then gone through it on All-22 as well. So unless you have something you'd like to say, don't bother sending me gift videos, as I get plenty in spam and don't watch them either.

Sure, if we'd RPO'd, there would have been eejits with a problem with that. Any failure would be questioned by some, whether it was a failure at a venture with a low chance of success or a high chance of success. Yeah, the difference isn't always easy to notice for everyone. Beside the point, though. Whether or not people squawk, it's still the smarter thing to take a smart risk than a dumb one, a high percentage chance over a low-percentage chance. And yeah sure, you can say the left side of the OL failed if you want to. But they failed at a task you shouldn't reasonably ask them to try. You can say a guy failed because he couldn't bench press 2000 pounds. Yeah, he failed. Shouldn't have been asked to try, though. They were set a task with a very low possibility of success compared to other smarter options. If on a 4th and one we took out Milano, replaced him with Harrison Phillips and then put Phillips between the LT and the LG, Lotulelei between the LG and the C and Zimmer in the gap between the RG and the C, leaving the outsidewe'd be thrilled to see them running a QB sneak instead of seeing them attacking the weaknesses we'd created outside the tackles and behind the lines. And Philllips isn't a 345 pound run stopping NT like Naquan Jones is.

That. For instance, on the first play he calls a haterz play, Edmunds is off-screen, then comes running in to make the play on the short pass through the middle for a 10 yard gain and a first down. He calls it a haterz play, but it's simply that Edmunds' job wasn't there. You can see it on the All-22 Two guys went out for passes on the offensive right side, one crossing in front of Edmunds and going over there. Edmunds follows him fairly far to the right. But he was the right guy to cover. If Edmunds hadn't covered him, nobody else did either and he'd have been wide open and the gain would have been longer. The Titans sneak an RB around the other side of the formation and into the middle as a safety valve, and he gets the ball two yards past the LOS. Edmunds has a ton of ground to cover, but cover it he does and he comes back and makes the tackle. It's a good play, helping force them to go to the safety valve and then covering a lot of ground to make the tackle. Haters might indeed complain but they'd be missing the point. I didn't even look at any of the other haterz plays when this one turned out as I'd suspected. Some of those plays might well have been something he could have done better, but when the first one had him doing a fine job with his assignment, I didn't bother to look at the others.

Sorry, this just doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's true that if you can't make a sneak if the other team is lining up their normal personnel and formation then yeah, there's something wrong. But that's not what they did. They took out one of their LBs and substituted a 345 pound second team nose tackle, Naquan Jones. Then they moved their 5-tech in to the 3-hole. They compressed their formation and they brought in a personnel grouping specifically to stop runs between the guards. They had two nose tackles in there. Teams can stop something if they want. You can do it. You overcommit, and you can stop that one play. And that's what the Titans did on that play. The problem for the Titans with doing that is that it creates weaknesses elsewhere. But we didn't take advantage of those weaknesses elsewhere. They said, "OK, if you want a first down here, you're not getting it through the middle." And we tried it through the middle anyway. It was a bad choice.

A pretty damn fair amount. The difference between the #1 seed and the #2 seed isn't generally all that large. Look at their records, it's usually a tie or a game or at most two of difference. Particularly after a 17 week season, but even back when it was 16, teams are beat up and exhausted by the end of the season. Having a week to get healthy is huge.

There's statistical proof that the home team gets an advantage. And that advantage is bigger in loud stadiums like KC and Buffalo. And there are plenty of times when the best two teams didn't make it to the Super Bowl. More like the best, luckiest team in the playoffs, with matchups often making a huge difference. The Bills were probably the best team in two of our Super Bowls. Probably not the best team in the AFC one or two of those years as well, especially the year they made it from the wild card. Being the one seed doesn't mean everything. But it's a significant advantage, particularly these days when only the one seed gets a week off.

That run was for four yards. Which would have come in handy on that final play. I'd rather have seen Moss get the ball with the chance to pick his gap on that final play, or maybe Josh on an RPO or read option. Actually I'd really rather they'd just kicked the FG. I understand their decision, it was not stupid, but I wouldn't have gone that way.

You can't expect the OL to make that play. It's not reasonable. The Titans had compressed the line, moving their interior guys in. But they had also brought in guys specifically to fight off a sneak or a run between the guards. They had three three hundred pounders there, squeezed further to the center than normal. Naquan Jones had only played 14% of snaps this year, he's the backup NT. He's not a regular and he's 330+. The Titans essentially said, if you're going to beat us here, it won't be through the middle. And the Bills tried there anyway. Bad tactics. Both Morse and Feliciano had a guy on each shoulder. Every gap in the center had a 300 pounder in it, and they weren't playing read-and-react, they were simply coming forward low and hard on the snap. The one shot running that sneak was if Allen had tried to leap over and stick his arms out. Which is a risk, because the ball can be slapped out. But Allen went low.

Moss ran forward, the play was over. Which it generally is. Guys do push, but how often do you see it on sneaks? Virtually never, because it's too quick a play.

Good post, Shaw. A lot of sense here. Tough game to watch near the end.

It's a legitimate opinion. Certainly could have happened that way. But if we got the ball the odds were pretty good we'd have scored a TD also. IMO Vegas would have given the Bills a slight advantage for being the better team. Maybe made it pick-em. The rest and stretch-break you get before OT would have played in the Bills favor. I'd have kicked it, and if I went for it, I'd have faked a run into the middle and done something else. Daboll/McDermott apparently called a different play. Wish Josh had gone with it.

We know we have the talent. We also know we have the OC. Just because we have the talent doesn't mean the talent is executing. Allen doesn't appear to be throwing as precisely and consistently as he did last year. That's a big part of it, IMO. There's plenty of blame to go around. Williams was kicking butt at RT last year and this year he's not good enough to keep a rookie off the field. Dawkins doesn't appear to be fully recovered from his bout of Covid. And Daboll get his share too, but it certainly isn't all on him.