Thurman#1

I think it's precisely that simple. The only real problem with letting the the other team get a lot of TOP is that you get fewer possessions. Other than that, it's fine. The Kelly-Thurman Bills used to be killed week after week in TOP. But the offense was good and so even if they got fewer possessions, they scored enough points to make it work. To work very well indeed. I'm getting your point. I'm disagreeing strongly. The Bills offense had nine possessions and punted four times and was intercepted once. That's awful, and it is basically the reason KC won.

While I think your work is thoughtful, observant and interesting here, I think you're off-target in one area. To me - and of course this is just an opinion - I think you are approaching this wrong on the DL. You seem to be saying that there is likely to be a trade (reasonable), so I'm going to look trade-first and figure out who we keep after looking at the trade. And I don't think that's the way they do it. I think they look at who they want to keep, and after deciding that they see if they can rustle up a trade with the folks they don't want to keep. And to me, Obada has been kicking butt this year, to the point that he's one of our two or three best pass rushers, and maybe even better than that. And yet the league-wide perception of him is that he isn't that great. I mean, we were able to get him for a one year, $1.5M contract. So I think if we traded him, we wouldn't get as much value in trade as he would give us on the roster. I think he's right here this year. I agree with most of the rest of what you said, it all seems reasonable and possible. I think it's really possible that some other DL will be traded.

Yeah, there is a legit counterargument there. You'll tend to get fewer drives, as the other team burns time. But when you hold the Chiefs to 26 points, your defense has done a pretty good job. The Chiefs averaged 29.6 a game. The Chiefs offense averaged 29.6, but their defense averaged allowing 22.6 a game, and we only managed 17, far below what they can generally be touched for. And it was worse than that. We only scored our 2nd TD, going from 10 points to 17, when the game was all but over, with 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter. The problem that game was mostly with our offense.

I'm not sure I agree with your contention that he isn't good at it. He appears to be good at it sometimes, though if what you mean is that he isn't excellent at it, or nearly as good as he is in other areas, I'd agree. It's true he isn't a mauler or a guy who often blows people up, though again he does it sometimes, such as on the goal line stand where he stoned the RB at the one last year. But he's too tall and rangy to consistently blow up guys. He doesn't have an easy time getting underneath them. It tends to be squattier guys who are the real slobberknockers. Totally disagree with you about the burst, though. His draft evaluations speak pretty eloquently about that: "Edmunds is an explosive athlete with rare physical gifts for a linebacker of his stature. He possesses both quick short-area burst to close in on the ball and recovery speed to track down ball carriers in pursuit. " https://cheeseheadtv.com/blog/tremaine-edmunds-nfl-draft-profile-and-scouting-report-249 "Edmunds combines elite size, speed and explosiveness into a productive, versatile linebacker package ... Twitches for a second when it is time to make a play ... Combines length with rare reactive athleticism and agility to access and tackle opportunities from unconventional angles" (Zierlein) https://www.nfl.com/prospects/tremaine-edmunds/32004544-4d00-0000-c30c-56fb5191e34f "Sometimes his amazing athleticism helps him to recover and still be in position to make the plays, but at the NFL level, playing against better athletes, he will need to improve his play recognition skills drastically." https://www.cover1.net/draft-recap-round-1-pick-16-lb-tremaine-edmunds/ Those were the first three that came up. All of the evaluations mention athleticism burst and quickness very positively. I think he's good at it depending on the situation, but that it's not his greatest strength, or even close. Agreed that it generally isn't his job.

Makes total sense to me. The run defense and run offense are the third and fourth most important phases of the game, and have been for many years. Doesn't mean they're entirely unimportant. They're not. But passing is what the game is about these days. Having the other two phases also be strong makes your team more bulletproof, but the key is the passing game. It's not a mistake that there are so very few Brandon Spikes types out there these days.

I don't even agree with this. He's got areas where he's stronger than Smoke, such as health so far, and high-pointing the ball, but a healthy Smoke to a second-year Davis isn't an upgrade, IMO. Well, we'll see. Obviously there's no way to prove you're wrong, short of watching the season play out, but I sure think you'll be shown wrong there.

This year on this team? I don't even see him challenging for #3 unless one of the top three get cut or injured. Ever on the Buffalo Bills in his career? I don't see it happening in the next eight or nine years as long as Diggs is here. My guess is no. Ever on any team? There I'd say it's possible. Maybe he'll improve greatly over the next few years. But he looks to me like a solid guy who's really good at the scramble drill.

No, you say I'm sorry you feel that way, but you've done something wonderful, something that will have positive effects not just for you but for the people around you, for your friends, and for your society and even for your world. You've done something great here, I'd like to shake your hand. If I met McKenzie, I'd congratulate, support and compliment him.

No, because there's nothing to hate him for. The vaccinated player has done his best to see that he doesn't get it, and thus that he doesn't pass it on. The measure he took is not perfect. He still might catch it and thus risk passing it on. But he's at least done his best to prevent that. Whereas the unvaccinated player has refused to do something very easily done with very little downside. He's refused to take the best most efficient step towards protecting others.

"Attempting" is a bit overstating it. What they did was propose it, apparently at the beginning of talks involving back and forth proposals.

While that's certainly one outcome, it's far from the only one. And if they were smart, the folks above Nagy would rein him in on that logic and tell him to value the long-term over the short-term here. From how it looks, they may already have started that. You're very right that there may well be pressure on Nagy. There's nearly always pressure on people to make stupid decisions based on short-term logic. Many decisions are made based on that kind of awful process. But the fact that there was a lot of pressure doesn't make the bad decisions any better. Yup. Good point about their OL. I still think David Carr could have been a really good QB if he hadn't been systematically mishandled and forced into a case of PTSD.

On 9/12, in week 2 and week 3, there's something at stake to gain by taking the risk.

Trying to slow down the video, I don't think Oliver got a hand on it. He got his hand up so maybe the QB had to throw over him. He was around a foot low to touch the ball, though. The way it's written, I almost wonder whether Oliver's play that they refer to was on an earlier down or something.

You may well be right. History points that way. I hope for his sake that he sits for most of the year, if not all of it.

The long term future of that guy, which for the next four to six years will probably correspond well with the long term success of the whole franchise, is way way more important than winning (very likely losing, actually) one game in a season in which the team will not compete for a championship. Sit him, work on his mechanics and his understanding of the game, and do it for the whole year if you think that's what will work best for him long-term. Follow the Mahomes plan.

Yeah, I agree with this strongly. Start him, don't start him, whatever. But limit his playing time so he's not too worn down late. Winter is coming.

Erased it. Don't want to spread misinformation. Thank you. And yes, I'm hoping they see the five days at home as a wakeup call.

In the lowest four teams of the league is absolutely low. If I were vaccinated on that team I would be angry.

Heh heh. Didn't want him in the first. But I hope he recovers as soon as possible. Hate to see things like that.

That is some stunningly bad logic. Because a thing has not happened yet is not even close to proof it won't happen soon.

Anecdotal evidence is not scientific. How many total vaccinated people went to that conference? How many tested positive. You're misunderstanding how statistics work. Statistics work in the long view, in the large numbers. And that's the important thing. Sure there will be groups of people who have higher and lower infection rates. Again, that's how statistics work. It is utterly unsurprising.

Yes. That's what the guy above was talking about when he said it was about 80% effective. Supposed to be around 90% effective at preventing infection from the old strains and about 80% effective from the Delta variant last I saw. Even if it's only 10 - 20% of people exposed getting infected, if millions are being exposed, that's still tons of cases.

My friend, that is NOT the worst case scenario. Not even slightly close. I do worry that this seems pretty likely to happen again during the season, and that even if they don't test positive that we miss games. Could happen again and again to the same guy or guys. The rules allow the vaxxed to play through close contact. Not the unvaxxed.

Training staff. No, it doesn't "just" reduce the chances of life threatening symptoms. It also lowers the possibility of catching COVID if exposed. Does not eliminate it, though, that's quite correct.

Took a quick look at both drives and he did his job each time. He was pushing the pocket on pass plays to prevent Dalton from stepping up, and on run plays he was never pushed back, pushing his guy laterally and ending up right at the point of attack. He did well. DTs can be doing a great job even when their name isn't called.