Thurman#1

Sure, you can put things on the credit card. But that has its effects down the road. And teams that are tight on the cap can sign players. But not as many or as expensive players as they would like. It has its effects.

Wow, your saying "Star wasn't that good two years ago," and then adding "Period." was very forceful. Still pretty misguided, but very forceful. Yes, he got a lot of criticism. Most of that came from people who were busy scapegoating. Not that he was terrific or anything. He wasn't. Had a few bad plays too. But overall he was a good solid player who did what they hired him to do. And what they hired him to do is something that very few people in the world can do at a high level. It made a great difference in our ability to stop the run when he wasn't here this year. And Milano is far better than "decent." He's really smart, really quick and very instinctual. One of the better LBs in coverage in the league and good at the run as well.

Yeah, it wasn't just one game. It was a lot of the beginning of the season. But the last ten games or so they were good, very good actually. In the last ten games, if their per game stats on points and yards were pro-rated out to 16 games, they'd have been 8th in yards allowed per game and 5th in points allowed per game. That's not great, but it's very good. How many good QBs did they play when the defense was playing well later in the season? Russ Wilson, Kyler Murray, Justin Herbert and Roethlisberger. Which is 4 out of 10, and 40% is probably about how many teams in the NFL have good quarterbacks, so these are fairly normal numbers. The defense didn't look great against the Colts but the Colts have a terrific offense. Holding the Colts to 24 points and 340 yards was a good solid game, well below the Colts averages. And the D ended up winning the game that day, as the Colts got the ball at the 14 with 2:30 left on the clock, plenty when a field goal would have tied it, and the D systematically strangled them on that drive. Yes, they were outmatched by the Chiefs offense. You do realize that pretty much the whole rest of the league was too, right? You didn't have to be a bad defense to have the Chiefs perform well against you. The defense was very good. Not great. They certainly need to work on being better - as does every person, every coach and every unit really - if they want to compete for a championship. But they were very good after those first six games where we had injury problems and problems with the new guys meshing and learning to deal with not having a space eater as well.

Yes, Lynn. Pegula is the one who let Ryan go during the season. You can bet he had the OK on any move for an interim guy. The buck stops there. And Whaley was retained when he could have been let go. That is absolutely a form of hiring, keeping a guy in place when you could let him go. The buck stops there also. The Pegulas are responsible for Ryan, Lynn, then McDermott, and at GM for Whaley in 2015 and 2016 and then Beane. It would've been bizarre to fire Marrone in December when they weren't awful, so it's legit not to give the Pegulas any blame for him. But these guys above? Absolutely.

Really?

Yeah. It's likely to be more complicated than that, especially for the first couple of years, but that's how things will eventually settle out, doubtless. Wouldn't be surprised to see rookie minimum and vet minimum salaries being raised by a fraction either.

Ah, gotcha. Makes sense.

Agree with most of this, but I'd argue it was mostly their good drafting rather than their good FAs that got them ready for when Brady came. Look at these guys that they drafted who started this year: Ronald Jones, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Scott Miller, Donovan Smith, Ali Marpet, Alex Cappa, Tristan Wirfs, William Gholston, Devin White, Lavonte David, Carlton Davis, Sean Murphy-Bunting, Antoine Winfield Jr, and Jordan Whitehead. That's good drafting and development.

Chad Pennington was a likely future Hall of Famer till the arm injuries, so bad comparison. And while Tua doesn't have a gun, he's got a stronger arm than Pennington did after the injuries. Tua has a starter-quality arm. The question about him is whether he can develop an NFL-quality head, as far as making the right decisions quickly. Wait, you're saying that giving them to you to develop is ... not a good idea? Is this an autocorrect problem?

You're understating. The Bills also traded away a very solid LT in Cordy Glenn, with a 5th rounder to move up from #21 to #12. More, they were fully intending to trade up to #5 with Denver rather than #7, and that would have required quite a bit more draft capital, probably preventing them from making the 2nd trade up for Tremaine Edmunds. The bottom line is that this year there are/were a few other options available, such as Stafford, Watkins, Darnold (who still might turn out to be excellent in the right situation), etc. But if you get shut out of those guys and also the draft, you're essentially resigning yourself to not being in contention for the next few years. It hurts a lot to give up those picks. But it's worth doing, though the GM is essentially betting his job that the QB they get will work out. If the QB isn't good enough, it's generally a new GM who will take the next stab at picking up a QB. So, yeah. Worth it. You'd better be convinced your guy will be good, though.

Yup. Just this. Targeting one guy in a situation like this actually makes you less capable. You get tunnel vision and you tend to think that since not getting him would be failure that doing almost anything to get him is justified. Doing that almost forces you to be willing to give up far too much to move up. It's not how rational decision makers work, and Beane is rational as hell. Targeting one guy induces confirmation bias.

You're nuts if you think you, the Bills or anyone but the GM of the Browns "knew" Josh Allen wasn't going #1 to Cleveland. They may have had a strong opinion about it. But they absolutely didn't "know" it. They simply didn't. They didn't know any of this stuff you're saying they knew. They may well have thought the top three picks would go the way they went and hoped nobody would trade up to #4 You also are mistaken about the details of the Denver deal. Denver didn't tell them Chubb was their guy. They just said they had a guy and if he was still there they wouldn't make the trade. Turned out the guy was Chubb, and Buffalo might well have suspected that. But yet again, they didn't know. And we absolutely know that the Bills had Allen in their top three QBs, of course, since they picked him with only two already gone. But it's never been proven that they didn't prefer Darnold or Mayfield to Allen. We may strongly suspect it. We may hope it's true. But we don't know it.

Hmm, interesting. I certainly wouldn't believe that this time of year, but it's absolutely possible. Certainly a very good chance the Bengals take Sewell, but yeah, not a certainty. Decent chance they go elsewhere, though I personally doubt it as they wait for Burrow to recover from his injury. Same point, though. There is a major difference between what will be available at #6 and at #12. They may or may not want Chase, though he'd be one of my top two guesses.

I don't think there's any confirmation that she gave the reporters the name of the other therapist, is there? Which would make sense, actually, if she wants to maintain her own anonymity, why would she give them the name of a woman she now doesn't trust? She'd have to think it would make it more likely that her own name would eventually come out.

Yes, they've spent the offseason. But targeting only one player isn't the way it works. Then or now. If Allen had gotten picked they'd have continued the process. They wouldn't have folded up their tent. They do what all the teams do, they put together a board. They do scenarios and figure out when and if they would trade up, down, etc.

IMO they're set to pick up one of the top two players on their board. They wouldn't have made this trade if they wanted whoever will be the 3rd and 4th QBs picked. Probably would not have done it if they wanted Penei Sewell either, as he's very likely to go at #5. So if they don't want a QB or Sewell, they might get a shot at their #1 choice, whoever he is. TE Pitts? WRs Chase or Smith or Waddle? CB Surtain? LB Parsons? Most likely one of those. Perhaps even Mac Jones, though I doubt it. But say it's Pitts, Chase, Smith, Waddle, Surtain or Parsons. If the first four picks are QBs and Sewell goes 5th, they get the #1 guy on their board. The only other likely alternative first five picks is three QBs instead of four and Sewell. In that case, one guy will be gone from that group of six, maybe Pitts or Chase? So as long as they have two guys they are thrilled with there, they will get one of their top two and a bunch of picks besides. And a very solid chance of being able to pick their #1 guy. Whereas at #12 all or nearly all of those six would probably be gone. This trade, both parts of it, makes total sense to me. Before the second trade they would have been able to be pretty sure to be able to pick one of their top seven. After the second trade they are almost sure to be able to pick their #2 pick and maybe even their #1. If you have a very good chance to pick the same guy at #6 that you would have picked at #3 ... and you can then pick up an extra 1st rounder down the road and a couple of others ... man, do it.

Please. That's nonsense. He absolutely took on a bunch of doubles and he certainly does eat up space. He's very good at it, but certainly not elite or anything. And he's a two-down guy, not a penetrator or an athlete. But he's good at what they want him to do. And he could certainly be here longer than a year, though not if he regresses.

They've got three. They don't need one this year. They could definitely use a young guy to develop, though. Wouldn't be surprised to see them draft one.

I think you're pretty wrong about that.

Whoever is their highest rated CB, whether it's Campbell, Kelvin Joseph, or someone else. If I saw your three as the best options, I'd look hard at Phillips to see if he can play DE the way the Bills like. If he couldn't, I'd look at Owusu-Koramoah to see if he could fit what I needed as a big nickel. If I thought he couldn't, I'd trade down a ways. I love the way Owusu-Koramoah plays, but I can't see him lasting long as a pure LB at his weight. Not sure if Phillips can be a hand in the dirt DE.

Fair point. Wouldn't be surprised to see us upgrading on speed at CB and maybe big nickel in the draft this year.

They don't have to. This already is a proven coordinator and scheme. 2018: defense 2nd in yards allowed, 18th in points allowed 2019: defense 3rd in yards allowed, 2nd in points allowed 2020: the D certainly wasn't great, particularly at the beginning of the year. (In the last ten games, if their per game stats on points were pro-rated out to 16 games, they'd have been 8th in yards allowed per game and 5th in points allowed per game) The D certainly wasn't great this year, but in the second half of the year they absolutely came around and started playing much better. And I don't doubt we'll be having the same discussion next year. Some people were doubting this D even in 2019.

Talk about "never gonna learn" ... Thinking you've identified our team's ceiling that year ... in March ... is a "geeeezzzzz" indeed.

Doesn't look that way to me. Looks to me that when he starts his push if anything the band goes downwards, making it harder. It's only after he's built up his own momentum upwards with flexion that the band is able to contract. I often do pushups with hands on two different swings while my daughter is playing at the playground. The instability means I can generally only do around half of my normal max and it definitely stresses not just the usual pushup muscles but the stabilizers as well. I love that exercise. Instability makes it a lot harder, and my feet aren't at the same level as the swings, and the band makes Henry even less stable. I'd love to try one, but there are people around where I work out and a guy my age would look like an idiot trying this, even if I managed one or two somehow. Particularly the chain.

If trades are evaluated that way, by the players taken, it's generally by people not thinking as precisely and clearly as they should. It makes it easier to compare and thus come up with a result. But that's truly evaluating not the trade but instead two things, the trade and the drafting. Those are two different things. The tradeup in which we took Watkins was a bad trade. It made us more likely to come out of it with lesser value. But the drafting was also bad. If they'd picked Mack instead of Watkins (I thought for just a moment that they would ... sigh), the cumulative result would have looked a lot better. Whaley screwed up both facets of that. But that's always more likely. It's precisely overconfidence in your talent at picking that means that keeping more draft picks or trading for more will increase your chances.. But it's your first sentence I disagree with. You're dead on with the rest of it. They increased their chances, but could still either screw it up or knock it out of the park.