Thurman#1

On the contrary. When you say "within a yard" you're missing the point. You could say they're all within a yard if some got 0.0001 yard and others got 0.9999 yards. Still a huge variance, though. Same with the figure here. Within a yard is a very significant difference when the percentage of difference is so large. If everyone was within a yard between, say 12 and 13 yards, yeah, it's insignificant. Now, that would be minisiscule variation, where the figures only vary around 8%. If on the other hand you're looking at a list (as you are here) where the variation is between 2.0 and 3.0 yards, that's a 50% variation in productivity in that area. That's very significant difference indeed.

YBC isn't really about speed, it's about blocking. When you look at the top ten at the YBC stat link in the OP, it's clear that there are a mix of RB styles there. Derrick Henry is #1, and while he's got really good top speed, he's anything but a fast starter. Zeke is #5. There are breakaway guys and mashers, big and small, all styles. YBC is about how big and how good the hole is. Oh, and saying "Devin's very low yards before contact/attempt" is conflating two completely different things. You're right that Singletary's YBC is not good. But again, that's primarily an OL stat, and the fact that Moss's is similarly bad makes the same point. Singletary's Yards Per Attempt, though, are excellent over the course of his career and very solid indeed last year. If on the other hand you're not talking about Yards Per Attempt and are instead talking about the other figure shown on this chart, YAC/Att (Yards AFTER Contact per Attempt), um, you need to take another look at the chart. Singletary managed 2.9 YAC/Att. How many guys can you find who managed higher than that with 50 or more attempts? I only see two. Two others who tied him. That puts him in the top five, in a three-way tie for 3rd. That's pretty good any way you look at it. The top two RBs on this team have been effective after the hit, and effective overall, at 4.4 YPC last year. Singletary was terrific in 2019. All this without going over round three. Their ability to draft RBs hasn't shown great yet or anything but it certainly looks good so far.

Then you could also say to your boss, "Gotcha. I've arranged a new contract with a competitor who pays more. See ya." So, no, that shouldn't work in football. People who try to draw parallels between NFL contracts and most contracts in our society keep missing this point. Again, I'm no fan of bowing to Gilmore on this. But there's not a good analogy to be made there.

He was damn good in Buffalo, which is the reason that the Pats, who are nothing if not cheap, gave him that contract. He was never a fan fave, but still an absolutely excellent player here. He is a great player, and he is in the Pats system, but there's no major benefit for CB play of being in the Pats system, beyond the Pats generally having in the past put together very good front sevens to play behind. The guy is excellent. Having said that, if I were the Pats I wouldn't pay him any extra at this point. He signed a contract that paid a lot up front. That was to his benefit. Now is the time where that pays off for the Pats and they have every right to tell him to play under the contract or sit out.

He didn't say Mario >> Rousseau/Epenesa/Basham He said 2013 Mario >> 2021 Rousseau/Epenesa/Basham And 2013 Mario was an ass-kicking man among men. He was 2nd team All-Pro that year behind only JJ Watt. And while I personally think this year's combination of those three guys playing Mario's position has a very real shot at combining into a very good DE, the likelihood that they play - this year - like Mario did in 2013 isn't far at all from zero.

No, a great deal of the reason he improved his accuracy was that he got more accurate. A lot more accurate. And there really isn't much argument to this. His deep accuracy improved a lot last year and his middle distance a while lot more. And while some some in the "nobody could have seen this coming" crowd, as you call it, did indeed say it was unheard of to improve their accuracy this dramatically, and those people were indeed wrong, most didn't say it was unheard of. They correctly said it was extremely unusual, with only maybe two or three examples of any similarity, including Favre and McNair and about one other guy. Plenty improve some. It was a reasonable and common guess that Allen would improve significantly. But very very very few improve as much as Allen did. There weren't signs he was special. Or rather, there are a ton of guys with signs they might be special who never get there. There were plenty of signs of potential. And signs of improvement. People who knew for sure he was special after his second year were pretty much people who confused very very positive guesstimations and projections with facts. He even told us each offseason what he was working on, predicting before the second year that he would improve on short passes and touch, and before the third that he'd improve on longer stuff. Each time saying he'd work on fundamentals and mechanics, and each year they improved in just the way he said they would. That kind of improvement isn't the result of receivers. And yeah, the receivers helped. But most of the improvement was Josh.

Subjectively speaking, I think that's more than a little nutty. Our DL had three Pro Bowlers that year. Kyle Williams with 10.5 sacks, Dareus when he was still tearing up the league before he recieved his first contract, and Mario Williams in a year when he managed 13 sacks? With Jerry Hughes subbing in and putting up ten sacks of his own? Mario was a 2nd team All-Pro that year, and I didn't remember this till I looked it up just now, but Kyle was a first-teamer in the Sporting News All-Pro team. Puh-leeze. Quite a bit better than last year? Yeah, that would seem quite possible, particularly with the return of Lotulelei. but better than the excellent 2013 group? Doubtful. I'm really positive about Basham, but you're systematically over-estimating him. Rookie tweeners are wildly unlikely to have the kind of season you're predicting. Down the road, who knows, it could happen, but in his first year, the chances are really low. Nothing's impossible, but there's plenty that's very very improbable, and this DL prediction is one of those. Ah, you said it much better and more politely than I could.

Nah. "Speed kills on the edge and power wins in the middle" is a cliche, one which is true sometimes and not others. Different guys win different ways. Reggie White was fairly decent on the edge, and it wasn't mostly from speed. Jon Randle was terrific inside and it wasn't mostly from power. Aaron Donald is plenty strong in the middle but it's his burst, leverage and quickness that makes him special. Those are maybe the three most obvious examples, but there are a ton more. Everyone's a combination of speed and power and you can win or lose in your own different way. Star and Phillips are plenty strong enough, but so far they haven't showed themselves to be sudden enough. Neither one is quick enough to be a penetrator or to get into their guy early enough to get him off balance enough to run him back. Though it's early for Phillips. Maybe he'll develop some of that. He's penetrated a bit here and there. Oliver is powerful as hell, especially for his size but even without size as a factor. He beats doubles more than anyone else we've got. He hasn't put it all together yet, but shows the possibility of being really really good. That's one guess. IMO there were at least two or three others there who would have been a consideration. Not sure who those two or three would have been but there were a group of seven or eight guys, one or two or three of whom would probably have been possibilities.

Yeah, he's very unlike the Bills other DEs. He's been weighed between 275 and 285, and we don't have such big guys at DE. I believe Addison is presently our heaviest at 265. Epenesa was somewhat comparable when drafted, and then was immediately told to lose weight. Rousseau is taller and longer but weighs in at 266. Basham is a bit short-armed and very thick and strong. Unless Basham is told to lose weight (which I doubt, personally) he's an outlier among our DEs. Probably he's this year's Quinton Jefferson. Jefferson was supposed to be a hybrid DE / 3-tech, though the optout of Lotulelei scuppered that plan. That's Basham. Carlos does not look like our DEs. He's a tweener, really, which is what you expect when you bring in a guy to be a hybrid. Someone up above said he thought Basham was going to be elite. From your mouth to God's ear, but that's very unlikely. Wouldn't be shocking to see him be quite good, though.

It's hard even for them. When the KC o-line was healthy early in the year, they beat the Bucs 27-24, including 456 passing yards. I'd argue that shows a good passing attack being hard to stop even for KC. The Saints put up 34 and 38 points against them during the year, beating them twice. Yeah, Tampa has a terrific defense, though, and yeah, that's a very good thing to have. Can't argue that.

Sounds like here in Japan. They play it a lot in college, and there's even a pro league, but it's a small sport. Just about doesn't exist in high school. Two or three nights a week, usually Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, around in there .. you can watch a game at midnight with most of the commercials and the halftime eliminated. You take your chances on the teams, though they try to show good games. In Tokyo there are a few bars that will go out of their way to show football but now that I live in a city of less than a million, there's nothing except for the Super Bowl. And that's live, at 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning. In Tokyo I used to take the day off and go, or cancel morning classes. Here, I work at a college that has a bunch of foreign students including Americans, so sometimes one of the on-campus cafes will show the Super Bowl live or replay it in the afternoon. Bottom line, as a community thing, it just isn't enough. But for myself, NFL Game Pass is terrific. Every game, live or replay it at any time. It's expensive, a bit less than $300 for the season, but worth every penny for me. I even get to see the All-22 after about Wednesday.

If you didn't care, you wouldn't be answering. You're answering. There is no equivalency there. I'm part of the overwhelming majority which has never really suffered from much discrimination is a very different thing to be saying from what he is saying, which is that he's part of a relatively small minority which has suffered from discrimination throughout much of history. He wouldn't be the first one to ever do this if it weren't a quite different experience, particularly in the macho and at times regressive NFL culture, to announce that you're straight versus being gay. Anyway, good for Nassib, and I hope soon this kind of thing will indeed just not really be a story.

Yeah, it does. Maybe the world should be such that it doesn't, but that's not the reality right now, which is why he's the first. Doesn't feel like it will be a big deal somehow, the way it was last time with Michael Sam. That's interesting, Bill, never thought of it that way.

He really doesn't think that way. He doesn't try to say I'm right and you're wrong, simply that that's his opinion and here's how he backs it up. He doesn't care about hot takes. He does care about expressing his opinion, whether or not most agree with him. His eventual career goal is to be an NFL GM. Throwing a ton of hot takes out there will not push him in that direction. Oh, and ranking Brady as #10 is fairly reasonable, IMO. He's not ranking him historically, just as to how good he is right now. Which is very good but not as terrific as he used to be. Brady is in a fantastic situation.

Tasker has said that there simply wasn't enough time in the day to prepare for both STs and offense both. They had to pick one. And in that one room, whichever one it was, he had to work and prepare like crazy to perform at his best. He was always capable of being a good WR, and probably a McKenzie type of gadget guy as well. But he was more valuable on STs.

Respectfully disagree. I know nothing about what the true sack score is or whether it's worth looking at, but your post implies that if a guy doesn't get a sack he's failed, and that's not true at all. Hughes is a great example. He's consistently pressuring, making QBs move, but we haven't had anyone else who can consistently take advantage of that QB being forced off his spot. Pressures are huge, moving a guy is huge, and doing so means you've added value on that play, though obviously you'd have added more with a sack. If we'd had a guy on the other side who could have also been creating havoc, he might well have forced the guy to take a step or two towards Hughes that might have gotten Jerry a sack or four more. It's not always true, but a lot of the time, sacks are a team accomplishment even if only one guy actually brings him down.

Not that I pay attention to Twitter, but I'm not sure I agree with the left-leaning part. From what little I see, it goes both ways. Other than that, you're right. If he's just blowing off steam this all means nothing. Reasonable to wonder if he's doing more than that, though.

Scott and I on the same side. Feels nice!! Yeah, it's his right to not get vaccinated. But he wants to exercise that right and then refuse the consequences. What's the old saying, "Consequences happen," I think. Nonsense. Again, I think he's an idiot, but he certainly has the right to say what he wants. But not to refuse the consequences. I've looked in the Bill of Rights, and the right to refuse the consequences of your actions ... it ain't in there.

Oh, I see. And you know this because you have a list of the punishments that will be given for breaking the league rules, included repeated cases? He might easily miss a game. He might miss a season. I don't know, of course, but it's without question a possibility. Hell, he might opt out or just quit. He could easily miss large amounts of time if he tries to play but insists on breaking the rules again and again. There's no way to know. One quick example ... what happens if Beasley refuses to eat separately and comes down to eat with the team without wearing a mask. And then another player goes to McDermott and says, "Look, my grandmother lives with us. She has health problems that prevent her from getting vaccinated. I'm vaxxed, but that doesn't absolutely eliminate my chances of catching it. So, what happens if I catch it from Beasley and, while asymptomatic, give it to my grandmother and she dies? Any idea how that would make me feel? Look, what is the team going to do about this? I like Beasley but I don't like him enough to risk possibly killing family members." And there's no way to know what would happen. But it's not difficult to see that this could be like stepping into a hornet's nest. Millions of unintended consequences, including possible deaths.

Hunh?

Not actually "bad." Yeah, probably fair. But you can't compare the last two years together without pointing out that Allen has trended up a hell of a lot the last two years while Jackson started sensational and trended down a bit. And that's a huge difference. Yeah, if you compare two years they look alike. But you shouldn't. Josh Allen wasn't Josh Allen yet in 2019. When it comes to talent Jackson has thrown to, it's worth pointing out also that John Brown looked pretty damn good with Josh. And in Baltimore he started boiling hot his first year there. In the first nine games he puts up 601 yards and 4 TDs. Then they pull Flacco and put in Lamar, and the rest of the year, in seven games with Lamar throwing to him he manages 114 yards and 1 TD. Maybe some of the reason the Baltimore receivers haven't looked good is that Lamar is doing the throwing. Not all, but some.

Taking one against the team. If you can't play because of a political decision to break league rules, that's not acting in the team's best interests. It's prioritizing your own. I'm hoping he's blowing off steam. Seems to be most of what social media is for. I like the way Beasley plays. But if they have to go on without him, that's what they'll have to do. Yup. I think it's possible he totally believes in this. And plenty of people have the courage of their convictions. The problem being that that can include people from everywhere along the spectrum, Christians, pacifists like Desmond Doss, people who believe in the core values of democracy, people who believe in a moral code and so on, but on top of that it also includes flat-earthers, people who believe that the voice in their head telling them to kill a pop star makes sense, 911 truthers, the guys who wear tin foil hats to protect them from the real-life alien brain rays ... Having the courage of convictions isn't necessarily good for a person or for a society. Or a team.

Yeah, you're right, it is great evidence, dude. Out of roughly 96 starting LBs, (plus a bunch more on teams that run 3-4 Ds, but most of those extras are probably mostly EDGEs anyway) it does indeed show great respect that three of the four rankings have him between #11 and #16. Where are all of your rankings saying the opposite, by the way? You've had days to produce them, and yet, strangely, you haven't posted any. To give you a start, what I did was I just googled "NFL linebacker rankings." Those were the first four I found.

Really? "Both entirely true statements in the context of the NFL regular season"? Wow!! I had no idea that was true, Badol!! I guess you should then contact the NFL, Pro-Football-Reference.com, and every single other historical organization out there. Because they say you are ... what 's the word, again ... oh, yeah, "DEAD WRONG"!! That's it. As I've told you again and again, you are simply wrong about that. The word "never" doesn't have a lot of alternative meanings. You won't find a dictionary where "never" is defined as "outside of the NFL playoffs." And you also won't find one where "hasn't" is defined as " has not except for in the regular season where he has had two." Folks, do you see how sad this is? He's utterly wrong about forced fumbles, by any measure, in any way of looking at it. And while he's right that the thread is about the Defensive Player of the Year, he didn't say anything about that. He simply stated it as a fact: "never" - BADOLBILZ "hasn't" - BADOLBILZ Both simply factually wrong. He's wiggled, squirmed, justified and writhed. The way to handle that was always to say something along the lines of, "OK, OK, I was wrong about that, but ..." and continuing on. It's still the way to go. I won't hold my breath, though. It's been fifteen days, probably double-digit posts, and counting.

Dude, having an opinion like that would be fine. Bizarre, but fine. Again, weird to even think that you could have a good idea who will not even play. But again, you didn't give it as an opinion. You gave it as a fact. For those who weren't watching, here it is, the whole post: It's not real difficult to indicate something is an opinion. You managed it in your both the first sentence, and the last clause of the post. On the contrary, you stated that as a fact and haven't backed off of it all the way through the five or six posts you've left since. You knew what you said, as recently as a page ago: If you're now backing off ... hey, fine. A little late, but always glad to see someone revising an argument so it makes a bit more sense. I'm always trying to look back and see where I could do better, myself. It's why I so often go back and edit my posts. Always trying to say things better.