Thurman#1

Jesus, dude. One more time. According to you, we disagree that "if they had a Tom Brady led offense [they'd be able] to overcome that." For what is now the third time, could you please point out to me where I said that? I choose my words very carefully. If I didn't say something, don't assume I meant it. If I'd meant something, I would have said it. Now, I've tried with you three times. If you yet again continue on and pretend I'm making arguments I've never made, I will clearly see you're not worth having a discussion with.

Let me try one more time with you. I'm "touting turnovers as the proof behind why they sucked," hunh? Could you quickly please point out where I said that? For the second time, I thought what I really said, word for word, was that "defense really was part of the issue." And it absolutely was. If you want to talk about turnover differential, fine, go tell it to someone who cares. I'm talking, as I said, about the defense and the fact that it "really was part of the issue."

Good point. To say that 20 turnovers is why they couldn't make the playoff let alone the super bowl in 2020 is a bit misleading indeed. Could you real quick point out where I said that? I thought I said it was "part of the issue," but if you can find where I said it was "why," I'd love to see it, and I'd be willing to correct it. As for 36 not being sustainable, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. Long-term, no, but for another year or two? Maybe. But a lot of the reason they had 36 was that they were a terrific defense, strangling offenses slowly and making them take dangerous risks to break through. 36 was more than they'd gotten before. They were a much better defense than they'd had before.

Up to this year cutting or trading Stafford was prohibitive. If they'd cut him this year, he'd have cost them $47.5M in dead cap. Next year, though, it's very doable. $24.85M in dead cap, but they'd avoid paying his $9.5M salary, a $500K workout bonus and a $10M roster bonus. Very doable if they want to go that way.

Defense really was part of the issue. They went from far and away the best in the league last year to eleventh this year. Still good but nowhere near good enough to make up for offensive problems. They also had 36 takeaways last year, compared to 20 over 14 games this year. That's huge.

I wonder who you've been watching. I've seen people refer to Brady in that story maybe a thousand times. Are they talking about it less as the season goes along and there's more to talk about post-Brady? Sure, but that's what should be expected. Agreed that losing Brady was huge. Not convinced it's been proven yet that he was the bigger part, though that's the way I've always leaned. And I'm guessing that next year they get Matt Stafford or Sam Darnold or someone like that and win significantly more than nine games. But I agree with you this far, I don't think they're going to be anywhere near what they have been in terms of being one of the Super Bowl contenders every season without Brady.

Nah.

Peter still does an excellent job consistently. Thanks.

They chose them for a reason. The reasons are still in place. More, the players are being tested once every two days. Say Barkley and everyone else on the team tests negative on a Monday. So we switch the two on that Monday. Then Wednesday, Barkley and two other guys test positive. Now Barkley, our safe guy, has COVID, and Fromm has been exposed to a locker room where people were sick but asymptomatic and maybe he now has it too. And we're screwed. Doesn't make sense. Jerry Hughes might be happy. He'd maybe be the QB and they'd run the wildcat. And that's beyond the fact that Barkley is better right now and if anyone gets any reps it should be the guy who will be out there in the playoffs.

Yeah. I've heard it many times. When he talks mechanics, that's mostly who he's talking about, though he got some tips from Romo this year. Not that Palmer is teaching anything the Bills don't want taught. But Josh goes back to Palmer each offseason because he's getting what he needs there and he knows it.

IMO he'd turn down some of the crappier ones without a second thought. But if it's a good fit I agree, they won't be able to keep him with money and an assistant head coach title. He's in the driver's seat right now. He's no beggar, and he can be a chooser.

They're already included. With all those opt outs back, the Pats will have $69 M.

He looked very good from minute one. I don't see us being able to keep him ... with one possible exception. He's in the driver's seat now. Another year or two with Josh wouldn't seem likely to hurt him in any way. So he can be very choosy with situations. It's possible he might not find one to his liking this year. Probably not likely, as he's likely to have his choice of two or three spots, but certainly possible, and the odds would climb the longer we stay in the playoffs. Many teams would rather have their guy in place early.

No. Poor analogy. The time of your midterms is something the student has zero control over. Whether you are ahead and for how much of the game, is something your team has a great deal of control over. It relates directly to how well you're playing, not perfectly, but directly. It's an interesting stat. Shows that we tend to start early, for one thing. And that's a very good thing. EDIT: Oh, if I misunderstood and you were referring to the fact that he was only looking at after the Jets game, looking at things recently makes total sense. How we have played recently is a far better barometer of how good this team is right now, going into the playoffs than how well we played very early in the year was. They're playing much better, and that stretch of time was no cakewalk, with games against the Patriots, Seahawks, Cardinals, Chargers, 9ers and Steelers. People complain about using partial stats or leaving some out. But it's fine to do that ... as long as you don't pretend you're getting a complete picture. As long as you own up to the fact that you're only getting a partial look, that's fine. So if you say, "I'm leaving out this guy's worst two games, and you can see that he's actually playing very well this year," that's not reasonable. But saying the Bills have been terrific since the Jets game, very reasonable.

Nah. But thanks for all the evidence.

Yes, he was one of many good receivers from that draft, or anyway he looked like a good one for a few years. They were very high on Beckham Jr and if they hadn't traded up we'd likely have ended up with him or Ebron.

Sweet. It was sweet at the time and again reading the article.

Yes. But he was still raw, without question. And that isn't some new assertion, it's been the consensus, and the correct one, since before the draft process. Raw has a lot of components. It can't be reduced to just games played. Josh was raw as a saddle sore. But he developed.

Rare guys fail too. I haven't followed the argument here, I'm purely reacting to your post here. And yeah, his profile isn't common. But Wentz and Kaepernick are much the same kinds of rare, in terms of coming out of small programs and being hard workers. At that level, everyone's rare. While there are certainly types, these guys are all individual, all quite different and rare. I thought well before the Bills drafted him that he would have a shot, and that he was worth a top ten pick. I even thought the Bills might (not "would," I'm not that smart) take him because of the Newton comparisons and how they'd brought Cam along in Carolina. I didn't judge him by stats. But pretty much everyone out there runs a very real risk of failure. Maybe a tiny fraction of guys seem like sure things, the Andrew Lucks and Peyton Mannings, but just about nobody else. Things can go wrong. Or right. It's not as predictable as people like to think. And IMO an extremely large part of it is putting the guy in a good environment. What good drafters (and Beane certainly does appear to be a good drafter) do is maximize the chances they get the right guy and then support the hell out of him. But none of that is any guarantee. The single thing you can't know is how well a guy can adapt to processing huge amounts of information, and making extremely good decisions in extremely short periods of time. College guys see greatly simplified situations, offenses and defenses and slower athletes. There's no way to know how the decision-making will go. Some guys with terrific leadership, commitment and work habits never develop that extremely rare ability.

Come on. Nobody thinks he had "the perfect environment." Not even now. What they gave him was an environment where he was supposed to sit the first year while they were deep in the trough of that rebuild, and after that gave him consistent year-by-year improvement in the players around him. An environment that now has become excellent. Beane has admitted that they screwed up the QB situation that first year, saying that when they got rid of McCarron they should have brought in Anderson immediately at that point.

IMO ... pure opinion and I recognize that ... Edwards and Losman might have made it under better conditions, Edwards maybe in particular. If someone disagrees, I would totally respect that.

Oh, my. Nice. I'm happy with our tackles, but Peters was such an exceptional player, and next year we may lose Daryl Williams.

Ted Washington or Pat Williams. Fred Smerlas, maybe. Our LBs would feast. We'll get back Lotulelei next year, and our inside guys are playing better, but they'd be my pick for this year. At CB, maybe Antoine Winfield. Loved the way he played.

Awesome!!!

Interesting, Bill. Agreed that it will be fascinating to see how they appropriate resources as things get tighter. He might stress receiver more, thinking that Allen is more of a pure passer than Cam ever was. Maybe. Hard to say, though. I hadn't remembered that Whaley had set out his values so clearly.