Thurman#1

Very true. Matchups matter. And good teams have bad games and bad teams good games sometimes.

Yeah, you didn't see it. That's obvious. Thing is, everybody else did. You formed an opinion. It's not a reasonable one, but you're not changing. Confirmation bias. I fight against it, constantly, in myself. And I still occasionally find myself sitting on a position that's become unreasonable. It's a very human thing. You certainly seem to be correct that the conversation is going nowhere. Fair enough. But the facts don't change. After the Chiefs game the D became a lot better. They allowed 20.7 PPG after that, in a season where 24.8 PPG was the average allowed. That would have put them 5th in the league, after LA, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Washington. You don't see it, as you admit, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. And yet again, you made the claim that "the better offenses destroy this defense," and three times now I've pointed out how wildly untrue that is, and you still haven't addressed the point. So for the fourth time, the Colts certainly can't be said to have destroyed that defense, holding them well below their scoring average. Nor did Arizona. Nor did Baltimore. Simply wrong. And again, that doesn't mean they don't need to improve. They do. They need to find ways to improve the pass rush, hopefully bringing in a pass rusher in some way. They could definitely use a big nickel, which they've been trying to get for a couple of years now, to improve their performance against TEs and to make them harder to read, and they could use upgrades at second corner and maybe another D line guy to add to the rotation beyond the pass rusher. All true. Still, after about the first six games they got a lot better. Everyone saw it, from Romo, to the national pundits to ... well, everyone. Not absolutely everyone of course. You can find people who'll argue anything. But it's the consensus and for good reason.

You asked. They gave you the correct answer. Not worth exploring, particularly if he wants to be an LT.

We do have a really good defense, though it's equally obvious theirs is better. Also equally obvious that Tampa's offense was vastly better than ours against KC. Our whole team was flat against KC, STs excepted. But it's a lot more understandable to perform poorly against KC's offense than against its defense. But yeah, you're right, Tampa's run game isn't good.

Very good is zero stretch at all. It's what happened in the last half of the season. You want to say "terrific" is a stretch ... mmm, okay fair enough, maybe a bit. But a "gigantic stretch." No, Scott. That's a major stretch by you. They were really really good. Not elite, and they'd been elite the year before, so they fell back a bit, but really good in the last half. That's what happened. Now, as for your rather desperate concentration on the Colts game (I used the word "terrific" about the half of the season, not about the Colts game), you say, "That's not the whole story ... if not for Josh Allen they don't advance from that game." Pot, meet kettle. That's not the whole story, Scott. Yeah, if not for Josh, they don't advance. Same with the defense also, though. Allen didn't have a terrific game. The offense was solid. But they needed the defense to play well against an excellent Colts offense, an offense that scored 28.2 points per game and was held by this defense to 24. And your desperate attempt at sarcasm here, even though you threw in an emoji for stress, falls flat because what you're saying is true. Yes, the Bills defense did an absolutely terrific job there. The Colts had 1st and goal at the 4. The Bills D turned that into 4th and goal at the 4, and then on 4th they covered very well making Rivers hold the ball longer than he wanted to, and then Poyer covered pretty well, forcing Rivers to have to make a tough throw over him, and the DL pressured Rivers making him throw off his back foot. Clearly you didn't believe what you were saying, but equally clearly you were right. That turnover on downs was indeed an excellent job by the defense, excellent. If Rivers makes a perfect throw there they score but you can say that on pretty much any throw near the end zone. It's the defense's responsibility to make the throw tough and to bother the QB while he's making it. The Bills did both there. A really nice goal line stand. As was that terrific job they did on the Colts last drive. Terrific isn't a stretch at all on those two drives. The defense played well that game against a really good offense. Held up their end. And to repeat for what is now the third time with no previous response from you ... You said "the better offenses destroy this defense." And that is obviously false. The Colts certainly can't be said to have destroyed that defense. Nor did Arizona. Nor did Baltimore. Simply wrong. Now, did KC make our defense look bad? Yup. And our offense just as bad.

"Useless" is wild exaggeration. No, they were not useless. It's fair enough to say that they didn't play at the level they'd hoped, though. How much of that was down to the lack of beef after Lotulelei opted out? And how much early in the season due to the fact that they were new and there was no offseason? Jerry Hughes is anything but expendable. He had a very good season. There's no reason whatsoever to think this will be Star's last season. He could very very easily last another two after that, and even that's assuming they don't extend him at that point. No way to know, really. Could go either way depending on many factors. Yes, we certainly need a pass rusher, no question. Fair enough that they weren't the top 5 D we'd seen the past couple of years. The last half of the season they were pretty close, but yeah, not quite there. I'd agree with most of this. But I think part of the reason KC couldn't get to Brady was that his inclination was to throw quickly, inside the design of the play, where Allen's natural bent is to be tempted to extend the play and look longer.

Sorry, I said "They held the Colts to 24," correct? Could you point out where that is wrong? No, didn't think so. If they'd been completely outclassed, the Colts would have scored about 35 or 40 points. They didn't. Oh, and I love how you point to the Colts punting only twice ,,, and remearkably forget the two drives where the Bills D held them on downs, stopping them on 4th down in the first half and 4th down and 11 in the second half, when the Colts got the ball back with 2:30 and the Bills forced them into a 13 play time-drainer of a drive allowing no big plays and strangling them slowly when all they needed was a field goal. So, yes, they held the Colts to 24 and the Colts were a fine offense this year. And as I pointed out (and yet you strangely didn't address in your post ... who could figure that one?) your contention that "the better offenses destroyed it" was utterly and obviously wrong. That was far from the only good defense they played well against. As I said: Arguing that the Bills D wasn't very good the last half of the year shows only shows confirmation bias, a poor opinion petrified, polished and worshipped.

Oh, puh-leeze. That's ridiculous. The last half of the season our D was terrific. Not quite as good as last year, but very very good. As for "the better offenses destroy it," that's wrong on the face of it. Seattle was ripping up the league on offense till the Bills absolutely stonewalled them, and at the same time provided a blueprint for the rest of the league on how to do that. They handled the Cards very well till they got lucky at the end, the Chargers, and they held teh Colts to 24 and the Ravens to 3 So, that contention is balderdash. The Bills D needs a pass rusher, and certainly this year they needed beef in the middle, but Lotulelei will provide a lot of that next year. They were very good. They do need to get better, but they were very good.

It's one way to win. Not the only way. Out of pass offense, pass defense, run offense and run defense, run offense is the least important phase. Still, there are times when a bit of balance absolutely helps. But it doesn't need to be feared. If it's simply effective, that's totally fine. And it's worth pointing out that this year Tampa was 29th in run yards, far behind the Bills, and 25th in YPC, again behind the Bills. Fournette averaged 3.8 YPC this year, behind Singletary and Moss. Nobody "feared" Tampa's run game any more than ours.

You guys are absolutely going to the playoffs next year, injuries aside. And your QB isn't overrated the slightest bit.

Worth noting that the Falcons - Pats Super Bowl a few years ago looked like this one but reversed, with Brady and the Pats down. Falcons up 28 - 3. Then stuff happened. The momentum in this year's game never switched. And a lot of that was that Brady never let his foot off their neck. One mistake might have switched things around, given the Chiefs hope. Brady never made one.

Um, the 2018 Pats defense was #7. 13th in points. 2016 Pats were #8. 1st in points. 2014 they were 8th in both. Those were only the first three I looked at. So, no. Or are you saying that the opponents Ds were all top 3? Because the 2018 Rams were 20th in both.

Possibly true, but the guy on twitter entirely misses the point. You don't win a Super Bowl by winning one game. First you have 16 during which you have to make the playoffs. Then three more and you have to win all three. Then the Super Bowl game. And I promise that if the Bucs start the season with those 20 other guys they don't win the Super Bowl except with Brady and maybe Mahomes and Rodgers. Josh is very close but I'm not sure. Yup.

I didn't see all that much adjustment, myself. They were better wire to wire. And you're right that Tampa's D was better, the fact that Tampa's offense consistently scored and kept the pressure on, while the Bills offense ... didn't ... was huge.

Strongly disagree here. They were not good the first half of the year but the second half they were very good. And yes, the Chiefs made them look bad but if having the Chiefs offense score a lot on you means you're bad, then nearly every D in the league is bad. I wonder how the Bucs D would have looked if the Chiefs hadn't lost their OTs and had Mahomes limping. Second half of the year we put an excellent product on the field, excellent. Doesn't mean they don't still need to work on improvement same as every team but they were very good. We do need another serious pass rusher, though, no question about it, and it'll be good if Lotulelei returns next year as well.

Nobody with a single ounce of sense said this about the Bucs. Out of 22 starters this year, 14 were Bucs draft picks.

I absolutely can. I mean, you have to be utterly convinced that he stands a very solid chance to be your franchise guy. Without that, of course it won't happen. But I think there are teams out there willing to believe that. His salary is $15.4M and the roster bonus is $10M. That's a lot. Unless he's a top ten QB. Then it's actually cheapish. Plus nothing is guaranteed in 2022. Very doable for any team that believes.

Sorry, man, that's just a dumb idea. Sure, if you want to judge Marrone and Whaley negatively ... hey, that's totally fair. You'll get a bit of an argument, but only from a relatively few folks. But you have to stretch yourself like you're being racked, drawn and quartered to pretend that McDermott and Beane can be judged in any way by what the Bills did in 2013 to 2017. They can not, by any even slightly logical standard. Comparing the first four years of this regime to the first four years of the Chiefs, makes total sense, as long as you acknowledge that McDermott and Beane rebuilt, while Reid reloaded. And yes, McDermott traded away the pick that became Mahomes. He's made it clear several times since that he simply didn't have time to do what was necessary here as a new coach with a GM he didn't trust to also do the work necessary to vet those QBs. Hard to imagine why McDermott didn't trust Whaley to pick his QB when Whaley had gone all out saying he'd been in on the EJ choice ... why wouldn't you let the guy who apparently chose EJ, let that Doug Whaley choose the QB who would define your legacy with the team? And a team with Josh Allen on it doesn't have to worry much about any earlier QB decisions. Yeah, Whaley - Marrone sucked. But the new regime is only four years old and appears to have pulled off an extremely successful rebuild and be heading in the right direction even faster than Reid did. After Reid's first four years he hadn't reached the Conference championship.

Saying that you want to compare the Chiefs and the Bills rebuild is like saying you want to compare these two fruits: apples and medium-rare steak. But steak isn't a fruit, you say? Precisely. And the Chiefs didn't rebuild either. You're comparing the Chiefs reload to the Bills rebuild. You can do that. But thinking you're comparing two rebuilds is completely missing the point. The Chiefs could have rebuilt. Instead they brought in Alex Smith as an FA and became a competitive team immediately, winning 11 games the first year and losing the Wild Card game 45 - 44. Whereas with Tyrod we looked absolutely awful in that Wild Card game, scoring three points total. And in Reid's second year there, they went 9-7, while the Bills went 6-10 in McD's second year. That's not close. Especially when the Chiefs 9 - 7 included beating the Patriots in a year when they went 12 - 4 and won the Super Bowl. The Chiefs also beat the 12 - 4 Seahawks that year And that's what tends to happen. Rebuilds suck much more in the first year or two. A reload where you bring in a QB like Alex Smith has a possibility of being relatively pain-free, which is what happened with the Chiefs. And yeah, there's been a lot of criticism for the Chiefs game, but that's exactly because people now are considering our current FO as an extremely capable one. As well they should, Beane and McDermott have been terrific. This is understood extremely widely. When you are criticizing a coach for losing the AFC championship, you're considering him as a successful guy. You're accepting much higher expectations.

That's very far from clear. The argument is that for a four-game stretch we did much worse than any other time of the season, but that four-game stretch is also when we played 3 of the top seven defenses, in the Rams, Fins and Pats. May have been a factor, though.

Yes, Mahomes increased Tyreek's production by about 30% ... just by throwing to him more. His catch percentage was higher in 2017 (71.4%, which dropped to 63.5% under Mahomes). He had 105 targets and then 137 under Mahomes. I'm not convinced he was much better with Mahomes, just more used, though. His yards per target was higher in 2017.

I can't click through there. Something wrong with the link, or something. But that looks way way low to me. If they can get him for that I'm all for it. I think he's going to get a lot more than that.

Interesting article. There's nothing about hate or anything close in it. And it does sound to me like he missed Reich, among others, as Reich could control him better. Does help explain his regression, though. And it sounds like there are a lot of nuances to the situation. It's neither that his teammates hated him nor that his coach knew he wasn't the answer, as one poster above put it.

If he gets them to the Super Bowl it's not too much. Even if it's three or four years from now, it's worth it, IMO. Not that I would want to pay that much if I'm the Colts. But if they genuinely believe in Wentz, it could be a great deal for them. You've got to have a QB. Really tough decision. Not laughable at all, IMO. I could go either way on that, depending how much I believed in Wentz. That's what it looks like to me too. They'd better be damn sure if they have to give up two firsts and a player, though.

A fine player. We'd be a better team with him. Don't see us being able to afford him. Make an offer, and wave goodbye.