Thurman#1

And the problem is very much not the receivers.

This.

This. Yes, it's an issue. No, there probably isn't much they can do about it if they want him to run and extend plays, which is a lot of what makes him special. Fewer planned runs, maybe, but not much more than that.

Nah. Or at least not yet. Takes far more than one game to say either of these things. Joe B. also pointed out that play action was way way down this week, possibly because they ran so many 4 and 5 WR sets. A bit more of that should help. But we were actually running an offense that was somewhat different from what we ran last year. What the Steelers figured out was a fairly newish variant. Again, as Joe said, they were much more successful with 11 personnel than they were with 4 or 5 WRs. If the Steelers figured it all out, how come our plays with 11 personnel were so successful? Same question for Allen's regression. Too much recency bias in the many sky is falling posts this week. Far too early to say.

McVay has one game with Stafford. They might be a top five Super Bowl contender this year. Or not. We don't know yet. And yeah, Allen had less than 300 yards. How was Daboll holding him back when Allen overthrew a wide open Sanders on that bomb? Sorry, but Allen had a bunch of poor throws today. You like Allen, so you're trying not to put any of the blame on him. That doesn't make sense. He deserves a lot of the blame today, just as McDermott and Daboll deserve a lot of the credit for last year.

More talent than they do? Yeah, probably, but where's our Aaron Donald? Their roster on defense is terrific. Two first team all-pros on D. Our WRs are maybe stronger than theirs but theirs are really solid up and down. Their OL was better than ours last year, and while they lost a bit, IMO stands to be better this year. Overall the Bills have the edge but not by a whole ton. LA has a fine roster. The Bills were better, but they also played three games better, living up to their roster. And no, the leading at the half statistic is absolutely not "an important gauge of how well a coach held onto the game with minimal talent." It's not even close to purely a coaching stat, and pretending that the Rams can be said to have "minimal talent" is flat-out ridiculous. The stat to look at for how well a team holds onto the game is wins and losses. Again, McDermott's Bills were 12-1 in that stat last year. And that doesn't mean anything particular either, barring that it's easier to win when you're ahead at halftime And again, the Bills with Allen already are one of the Super Bowl favorites. McDermott's record in that ridiculous stat (and I don't know what it is, but it's just fine last year and this) doesn't affect that.

And while Goff has his problems, arguing that he's not competent is absolutely ridiculous. Allen on the Rams is maybe a Super Bowl top two or three team. So are Allen on the Bills this year.

It is absolutely not all on Daboll. But yeah, he deserves his share of the blame.

Really? You figure that last year's 13-3 team should have been considered rebuilding? We were no longer a rebuilding team last year, and we went 12-1 in games when we were ahead at halftime. So, you mean, this year only? Is that what you're looking at with the 0-1? Let's be honest, that stat has zero importance, both since it's as small a non-zero sample size of NFL games as you can get, and because the whole stat doesn't matter much. What matters is what the score is after 4 quarters. Wins, that's what matters. Whether you were behind or ahead at halftime has virtually zero importance. Last year the Bills went 13-3. That's three more wins than the Rams had? Are we supposed to feel that somehow those 13 wins just weren't really important, that they didn't mean much because they were ahead at halftime? Doesn't make any sense. And you know what else doesn't make sense? Pretending that it's possible to isolate coaching as the cause of that stat. It's just as reasonable to point to McVay's record when losing or tied at halftime, which . Does that mean his teams suck at comebacks? No. It means you're more likely to win when ahead by halftime, especially as sometimes you'll be ahead by a lot, and that equally you're more likely to lose when behind. So, which group is more important, the 6-19 or the 38-0? Neither. What's important is the 44-21, which is really impressive, but is greatly helped by him not inheriting a team that was rebuilding.

McVay didn't need to rebuild. Every part of your record will look better if only you step into a team that is already on the way up.

Nonsense. Your confirmation bias is showing. Stopping play wasn't a problem. It's very arguable that a guy with better hands makes the play, though. It was a hard catch, but could have been made. He had a good game, though.

Hold the Steelers to 16 points against your offense (can't blame the defense for the blocked punt TD) and you're doing a pretty solid job. I saw a lot of guys flash, and several get schooled on individual plays. Overall, though, the defense really was NOT the problem.

IMO it's a lot more complicated than that. I'm listening to Buscaglia on the Buffalo Beat podcast and he points out that the Bills (who last year ran four WR sets 14.1% of the time in the regular season) ran 4 WR sets on 33.3% of their snaps, and beyond that they ran 9 plays with 5 WRs, so 44.9% of the time they ran 4 or 5 WR sets. And Buscaglia says that on non-penalty plays on 4 WR snaps they got the Davis TD, but only gained 122 yards on 26 total plays. Which is bad. https://theathletic.com/podcast/61-the-buffalo-beat/?episode=154 On the 9 plays with 5 WRs they gained -2 total yards. You read that right, negative two yards. Yikes! 120 yards on 35 total plays with 4 or 5 WRs. Whereas with 11 personnel, they managed 249 yards on 39 plays. This may have been a large part of the problem. The OL just didn't look good, and they were doing really well with the running nearly all game, but still not running much. Not that they should've turned to ground and pound, but they could've run a bit more.

Yes, certainly. You could be right. We'll see.

Yes, an actual 1-tech is what we needed, most particularly a space eater for 1st and 2nd downs to get the blockers off Edmunds and Oliver, and that's what Star is. Would they rather have a guy who can also rush the passer? Yeah, that's logical. Would they rather have one who both eats space and then is able to make tackles as well? Almost surely. Would they have to pay a hell of a lot more for that kind of unicorn of a guy? Yeah, they would. Does Star do what they need him to do, to eat blocks, singles and doubles, to not be pushed back, to clog things up in the middle? Yeah, he does. Again, they knew what they were getting with Star. They'd coached the guy for years. They knew what they needed and they brought in Star to get it done. Star or a guy like him is what they needed. As for injuries, if he misses a bunch of games this year, you'll have a point. Missing just one so far is not a big deal. Phillips, Butler and Zimmer are all decent 1-techs, Harry and Zimmer probably more so this year, but they're not the same type as Star. They're all more capable of penetrating and filling holes and less capable of being a space eater. I wouldn't want to see them only those three all season, but in one game against an OL that doesn't appear to be very good, I think it should be a good test. And as for his pay, there just aren't that many guys who can do a really good job as a space eater. Those guys do get paid, and not much less than Star. Second contract FAs who go in the first week or so do tend to get overpaid a little bit. If you need a guy to come to Buffalo after a mediocre year when Tyrod was your QB, you settle for that.

The word is "if," not "when." By using "when," you are indeed confusing a guess with a fact. More, if they do cut him, it is likely to (unofficially) be just as much about vaccination status as performance satisfaction. If they were unsatisfied with his performance, it would only have been prudent to bring in a space eater type to get him a year in the system, either in the draft or in F.A. They didn't do that.

He's played 32 out of 32 games for us. This is his first injury to keep him out of a Buffalo game. His first game missed to injury since 2015. And if you want to blame him for opting out for COVID, fine, but that's something we're getting from fans, not from the NFL. Coaches, players and teams understand valuing family health over football, especially last year before vaccines. He didn't play after opting out, but he didn't get paid either, excepting a very small (compared to NFL salaries) stipend ($150K if I remember right), that is only an advance from his salary this year.

Just not true. In each of his last four seasons, he's played all 16 games. So that simply is not true. In his career, and counting this week as an absence, he's played 108 out of 114 games. As Alpha and many others have said, McDermott and the Bills can be, and in fact are satisfied, and they have made that clear again and again and again. It's you who are not satisfied. People have to choose whether to believe McDermott and the Bills ... or you and a few guys on here. Not much of a choice.

Fair enough, but IMO is just fine. Do you think they need to make another move?

Yeah, this is just creating a bit of a cushion in case of injury or emergency.

Yup. Remember bringing in Charles Clay when we didn't have a QB who could throw to the deep and intermediate middle of the field? With Clay we had very little improvement as an offense. With Star they've been an excellent defense.

"Really? His cap hit if cut after this season is $12M"? That's some nice spin. You say, "he's making $12M this season," and that's nonsense. He's making $6.15M salary, $235,294 in a roster bonus and $250K in a workout bonus. That's $6,585,294, and that's what he makes this year. As for the rest of the $12M you're talking about as "this season's," it has nothing whatsoever to do with this season. It was paid in 2018, and it would hit the cap in 2022, and neither of those is this season. Not to mention that it's entirely theoretical since the Bills could easily keep him. If he gets cut after the season (and it's true the likelihood of that probably went up a lot with him remaining unvaccinated), the Bills will still have to deal with dead cap from his signing bonus, but Star of course will not make a penny more. As for the money they've paid him for his first two years, yeah it's a lot, and that's how it generally works in the first few years of a second contract since you're including the signing bonus. Contracts with signing bonuses have a very high per year cost the first couple of years of longer contracts. The Bills expected to keep him for a long time. They might well have continued to expect that if he maintains the level of play he showed in the early part of his term here and in camp this year, but his vaccination stance might well easily change that going forward.

Clearly by "the wrong way" you mean the opposite way from you, which will generally point me in exactly the right direction. There is a group on here always looking for scapegoats. Star, Tremaine and a few others are the ones that group has recently settled on, and clearly the anger is there for you using the word "boo boo" for an injury to a guy who has missed five games to injury in seven years of DL play. I'd love to see you call it a soft tissue boo-boo to his face. Was he expensive? Yeah. Higher-level FAs get good deals. But McDermott knew exactly who Star was, and knew he needed him, and brought him along to Buffalo. And in 2018 our defense allowed 4.2 YPC, in 2019, 4.3 YPC and last year when he opted out, 4.6 YPC. McDermott was right that he needed him. The years Star was here the defense took a major step up to very very good in 2018 and was elite in 2019, and without him last year (yes, there were other reasons, but he was a big one), took a real step back.

Yeah, that's the reason they drafted his replacement first in the 2020 draft three months before he opted out, and then again this year. Your suspicion is very unlikely. In your opinion they wanted to cut him ... and so they brilliantly instead guaranteed his salary for the next year before he opted out. Yeah, good thinking there. Hell, they'd likely have drafted someone this year if they planned to dump him next year. But the odds have gone way up on cutting him "for performance reasons" next year since he hasn't been vaxxed.

Yeah, in seven years of playing and including this game tomorrow, he'll have missed five games, three in 2014, two in 2015, and the one tomorrow. He's a workhorse. Yeah, it should be. During the offseason there was a lot of discussion that these two were playing against each other for a spot. It'll be nice to see them both play and see how they do, though the Steelers OL is not what it used to be.