Thurman#1

Yeah, the Bills let people do that, encourage it, I believe. Who knows about the Giants, though.

You're missing the point. Two guys running for a total of 1500 is just as "dangerous" whether both run for 750 or one runs for 1000 and the other for 500. It doesn't matter. There's absolutely zero variation in "fear" depending on whether a guy reaches 1000 or not. Teams fear based on effectiveness, and you can be very effective with or without reaching some totally irrelevant milestone that will be based mostly on carries anyway. Yes, good running makes Allen's job easier. No, not having someone reach your irrelevant milestone doesn't mean the running isn't good. Ah, I see. Hadn't noticed that, and it does make a difference. But IMO even back them it wasn't a glaring need.

Not necessarily. A better player would improve the team. Running is only part of the job description. The Bills clearly put a very high value on pass blocking, and for obvious and good reason. And yeah, getting a better player at any position would be a good thing. But our RBs are already good, as with most positions on this team, basically. It's absolutely NOT a glaring need, as the thread headline says it is.

Welcome to her. Looking forward to her writing.

This. Thank you.

Um, no, it was less meaningful back then because it was more common. Bell is not a good example. As Allen2Diggs says, Wyatt Teller is a far better example. I can't remember his name right now but another was a linebacker from maybe the '80s or '90s who didn't fit the scheme and had a long career elsewhere. They're few and far between, really.

No. The problem was the size of that defense through the middle. They were terrific at rushing the QB, as they had to be to get out of a conference that featured Dan Marino. But we had three DLs, and they weighed 265, a 274 pound nose tackle, and Hansen at 278. That's tiny. And unfortunately we had the bad luck to face four NFC East opponents in a row in the SB. And that conference was built around power running behind big physical OLs. The Cowboys OL had three guys over 300 at the time. The Bills simply couldn't stand up to that level of power and strength. And running so much kept Kelly off the field. Horrible, horrible matchups. Much like last year's Bills D without Lotulelei, we were very athletic but didn't have a lot of sand in the pants. A power running game was our kryptonite, and we faced four teams in a row that were built around that. If we'd been as lucky as Peyton Manning's Colts, to face a team one year that they matched up well against, thing would probably look quite different. But we didn't. The NFC East was perfectly set up to beat that team, unfortunately. Marv wasn't a game day genius, but the Bills program was set up terrifically. To get out of the AFC East you had to beat Marino consistently, and that's how we were built.

Disagree. Maybe the first. But in all four the major problem was simply that the D was built to stop the pass and we were unlucky enough to run into four opponents in a row with huge offensive lines and power run games. All four were awful matchups for us. Disagree. Know what happens with bad big game coaches? They don't make Super Bowls, much less four in a row. Marv was a damn good coach.

Please. They didn't get dominated by Indy. They played pretty well, held them to 24 points, well below their scoring average, and won the game by stopping them on their last drive. The Colts got the ball left with 2:30 left needing only a field goal to tie, and the Bills D absolutely strangled them. They put up a big turnover on the INT against the Rams, and stopped them on a crucial 4th down in the 3rd quarter, and both of those led to Buffalo TDs. And against Tennessee, the offense's three turnovers was a huge part of that awful showing. They also did OK against the Chiefs the first time around. And again, this is NOT the defense that played badly early in the year. At that point they were suffering from injuries and the lack of an off-season to allow them to figure out a way to get by without Star. They got much better late in the year with Milano back and Edmunds healthy and Oliver not having to play 1-tech anymore. They weren't as good as they had been the past two years, but the last half of the year they were pretty solid.

You're completely ignoring my point, most likely because it just makes sense. You say that the Pats did well, so it must be scheme. I say, yeah, they did pretty well, but that doesn't mean it's scheme, there are other things it could be. Then you say, no, they did quite well, so it must be scheme. Sorry, dude, ignore the argument or not, there are plenty of reasons besides scheme that some teams do well against certain others. Matchups being the very very common one, but there are plenty of others. There is no particular reason to think this is scheme beyond the fact that you simply appear to want to think so. In KC's case, they are a team that consistently has games where they often appear to be sleep-walking through things until they get in trouble and wake up and do what they have to do. Against the Pats the past two years, they simply didn't need to wake up. You're talking about the 2018 game when you say the Chiefs held them down pretty well except for big plays? Please. That's how it works with the Chiefs. They get a few big plays nearly every week. That's part of the reason they are good. You can't take away their big plays and argue that the rest of the way they weren't special, not unless you're willing to point out the obvious, that if you take away their big plays, their offense often doesn't look that good. That's not because they're not good. It's because they're an offense built to have big plays, and taking the big plays out is missing the point and distorting reality for no reason. And yeah, they got a long return, but again, even if you disregard that, they put up a ton of yards with just the offense and scored 33 even if you take away that TD, which you shouldn't. That was a very good game for KC's offense, with Mahomes seeing his first year of action.

The whole "vaccinated people can spread it too," thing is a ridiculous argument. Yeah, they can spread it too, but unlike the unvaccinated, they have done the single best thing they can do to prevent themselves from spreading it. The unvaccinated have not. Yeah, the vaccinated can spread it, but they do so at much lower rates. They have done everything that can reasonably be done. So of course they can spread it without penalty, since they've done something making spreading it much more difficult. The unvaccinated have gone out of their way to avoid doing their best to prevent spreading it. So of course it's mroe reasonable for them to expect to get penalized. And yeah, I understand why some people would be frustrated with the NFLPA. Same reason my kid gets frustrated with me when I don't let her eat ice cream before dinner. She wants to do what she wants when she wants, and she wants to do it without consequences. Consequences are frustrating. If your argument is that working in a quasi-monopoly is so very tough, I would point you towards the salaries they earn when in that industry. No, they won't be able to earn the same money elsewhere but most of them can make a perfectly fine living elsewhere, as football coaches, insurance salesmen, whatever. Nobody's stopping them from earning a living. Actions have consequences.

You say, "It's obviously scheme," but I don't think that's clear at all. There are many other things it could be. Just one obvious example is that it could be matchups. It could also be that - since KC beat them the last two years - that KC feels just fine with how they do against that D as long as the Pats offense isn't doing anything. And in 2018, a championship year for the Pats, the Chiefs scored 40 points and put up 446 yards of offense, though the Pats scored even more, winning 43 - 40.

Please. Let the owners do the same? They already can, every year, and every day. It's called cutting a player and it's an option for them every day. I understand not wanting to hear this nonsense all the time, but the idea that the players are abusing those poor owners by asking for trades or holding out is just nonsense. But more, there's a way out of your situation and it's the easiest thing in the world. Just unplug. Don't read the sports pages, don't follow the sports news. Don't come here. Just watch the games. Easiest thing in the world.

Yes, Hap, exactly right on the private businesses point as well. This is the entirety of the first amendment, guaranteeing free speech: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." And while it is Congress only that is specifically mentioned, it has been taken to guarantee that government may not abridge your right to free speech in those ways. Until such time as the Buffalo Bills become a governmental organization, the Bills, and businesses generally, are permitted to abridge that right. Otherwise, businesses wouldn't be allowed to fire guys who publicly announced secret business strategies, tweeted the combination to the office safe, or called a press conference to announce that anyone who didn't sell every share of stock they owned was flat out nuts.

Sorry, your spin there is so violent, the centrifugal force is warping gravity. It is in no way his health decisions that are causing problems for the team. Whether he takes supplements, whether he is sleeping eight or nine hours a day, how healthy he's eating and how many sports massages he's receiving, that ain't the problem. It's turning things into a public issue. It's the willingness to risk the health of others, the willingness to cause his team competitive disadvantages based on NFL rules, and probably the willingness to make his response very difficult to predict, something teams don't like. IMO he's not going to get cut unless he's causing consistent controversy and distraction. That could happen, though my guess is it won't. But he also might end up retiring. That could happen and there doesn't appear to be any way to tell whether the odds on that are low or high. It's just up to Beasley and how he feels. And if that decision drags on too long, it could cause the kind of distraction and controversy that would irritate this FO.

Enough with the free speech nonsense. Nobody is having a problem with the fact that he's exercising his right to free speech. That's not the problem. It's what he's saying. It's the effects what he's saying might have on the team, on his competitive status. It's perfectly possible for someone to exercise his right of free speech to make an ass of himself. In fact, that's generally how it's done. This isn't a free speech issue, it really isn't. I can call my boss some unprintable names, and it won't be the fact that I used my free speech that will get me fired. It will be how I used it. Free speech doesn't protect me from getting canned for saying something that will have negative results and consequences for my company. The freedom of your speech does NOT imply that you are guaranteed a lack of consequences for what you say.

Both times the team was weaseling just as hard as the QB.

Well, sure, every Pro Bowl selection, every ranking of any type, is at least in part a result of such factors. Tremaine's injured shoulder, his decision to play through it because even injured they didn't have anyone who could play as well healthy as Tremaine injured, Star's opting out, etc. were some more factors affecting how he ranked, as did the ones you mentioned. And I guess we'll have to disagree about the NFC. You say that there are six better guys over there as if it's a fact, and it's not, it's your opinion. I think there are three or four guys over there who are simply playing better than Tremaine (nearly all older than him, by the way), but after that it gets very foggy. After his shoulder got healthy again, he looked like he was playing at much the same level last year as he'd been in 2019, but the defensive scheme wasn't working around him nearly as well as it had been when Star had been shielding him on early downs and Milano and he were both healthy and playing extremely well off each other, and the inability to replace Shaq Lawson last year hurt more than most seem to see. I disagree with your opinion about Devin Bush as well. He's a really good young player, improving and looks to be a really promising kid. Without question the healthy Bush played better than the injured Edmunds, but once Edmunds was healthy, I don't think it would've been a shoo-in by any means. And Bush was in a much better situation on that Steelers D than Edwards. And it's worth remembering that I was responding to the wacky assertions that "No Bills fan thinks he deserved a ProBowl nod last year," and that "the tape shows he played poorly last year."

Way. Both are controlled through 2022. And in 2023 we have at present $100M in remaining cap space according to Spotrac. They could certainly keep both if that's what they decide to do, which seems likely though not definite at this point.

No, you're leaving out an awful lot there about Tyrod's Pro Bowl game. Brady and Roethlisberger were voted in and declined. Dalton was the first alternate and he couldn't play. Philip Rivers said no thanks. Luck was injured and ineligible. Alex Smith was rumored to have been asked under the table to play but refused. And then there were the NFC guys. That group of Pro Bowl QBs was the weakest in history: Eli Manning (in a year when his QB rating was 86.0, a year when he tied for 4th-highest in INTS with 16, one per game) Derek Carr, Tyrod, Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston and Teddy Bridgewater. Probably one of the top 6 or 7 QBs that year, in Russ Wilson. Wretched. Right, none, except most. That Pro Bowl wasn't controversial except in your small group of Bills fans watchers. Again, nonsense. Yes, it's about control of the player. But if he was the player you absurdly claim he is, nobody would be interested in controlling him. He's played well enough to make the Pro Bowl, to make nearly every list of top ten LBs out there. And no, it doesn't mean I didn't watch the games, it means that I, like nearly all of the football-watching world, disagree with you and your ridiculous biases.

Shaw, it's still too early to know about Oliver. Plenty of guys who became great had not showed much by the end of their 2nd year. Chris Doleman ended up with 150.5 sacks, including 21 in one year and by the end of his 2nd year he'd managed 3.5. Strahan is another guy who took a while to get going. Jim Marshall. Fletcher Cox at the end of two years was still promising. Cameron Heyward is another. Chris Jones' first two years looked an awful lot like Oliver's. Especially at DT, it takes a while for some guys.

I think you have a fair comparison here. Both were built to stop the pass first. But that older D was really really small through the middle. They had no Star Lotulelei. Jeff Wright played on the nose for them ... at 274 pounds. Even for the time, that was small for any DT, and outright tiny for a 3-4 nose tackle. Wright was a penetrator more than a space eater.

Dude, awesome find. Thanks for posting it.

The quickest Bruce ever tried to use leverage to get a new contract was after two years of a three year contract. (He got a new contract in '97 when he'd signed a three-year deal in '95.) That is hardly "right after" his new contract. And that three-year deal was three years for $8.3 M. Not $8.3 M per year, but $8.3 over three years. Even at the time he was worth more. Agreed that he was the best Bills player ever. There are two or thee others in the conversation, but I think he was the best.

It wasn't "all because of how they played the Chiefs offense from a scheme standpoint." That surely was a factor, but so was the fact that they did a good job rushing the passer, that Mahomes had a bad game, that Watkins fumbled a ball away in the red zone ... The Chiefs didn't appear to have much of a sense of urgency and were noticeably off in this game that was delayed by a COVID outbreak. When they needed points near the end, they got them, and they had no reason to fear that the Pats were going to score enough to win. The Chiefs were ahead the whole game, though the Pats kept it close.