Thurman#1

So totally agree with you on that play where Smith-Schuster hit Edmunds. Edmunds put him into the ground. That was a nice play on both sides and the announcers only mentioned Smith-Schuster. Nice writeup.

The officials underneath have the absolute best possible view, to the millimeter. Not worried in the slightest they miss this call.

The way to counter it is for the WR to get past it. The DB has to come forward. Get past that and the WR is gone.

It's way way way too early to say it's "just not going to happen." It might or it might not. It's his second year and he's missed a lot of time to injuries. Having said that, it hasn't happened yet.

They've been legit for weeks, since we found out how far Allen had come this offseason.

After Romo, Collinsworth. There are one or two others who are close, but those two are the best.

We get rid of those three and we'll have to replace them with probably two FAs. It would just leave holes. Murphy certainly seems almost certain. Butler and Jefferson considerably less so, though obviously they are both possibilities. But if you get rid of them, that leaves under contract : DEs: Addison, Epenesa, Hughes, Darryl Johnson DTs: Lotulelei, Oliver and Phillips Since we run an eight-man platoon, those seven alone would require us to bring in probably three guys, certainly two. I'm hoping we find a way, but I can't see much chance of keeping Milano, Feliciano and Williams. And Williams is the one who will maybe be the most expensive of the three. My guess is MIlano is the #1 priority of the three. I just don't see them having enough to keep Williams. If they do find enough, it'll likely be by creating new holes elsewhere, holes that will have to be filled one way or another.

Yeah, the two point conversions were the problem in that game. Good point. We played so well in the rest of the game.

In total, the NFL is usually within two or three points of 50%. The difference between 2.5 of 5 and 4 of 5 is more dependent on small sample size than anything else. I'm leery about that.

I didn't put that together till you said that. Interesting. With Allen on the roster, that hurts an awful lot less, doesn't it?

Oh, please. this is all ridiculous. Again let's point out the thing that you people who hate PFF want to avoid. Pretty much every NFL team buys their stuff. If they weren't excellent at what they do, these teams would not do that. And yet they do. PFF is very good at what they do. Chip Kelly is on record as having thought they were full of crap. PFF challenged him and they graded the same game. Kelly was shocked to find almost 100% complete agreement. They know what they are doing. So if it grues you, but not the NFL, no, sorry dude, that's on you. And of course we know whether it's Morse's guy or Winters' guy on 98% of the plays. If Morse is on one guy and Winters is trying to block but failing on another guy, it's not as if it's hard to figure it out. Yeah, if a guy runs between two OLs neither of whom is engaged, yeah, you don't know who had the problem. But that kind of play is pretty unusual and again, PFF does not mark down anyone if it's not clear whose fault it is. The fact that you're not putting a grade on those plays you talk about is irrelevant. When you say "bad throw" or "great throw," or "Oh, he got beaten, you're just saying with words what they're saying with numbers. No, you don't have a specific rubric as they do, but you're grading every play as well, but in words and without the painstaking watch-every-play-over-and-over level of thoroughness that they have committed to. We do indeed have long long discussions on here about some plays. Those are the other 2%. In every game there are 11 Bills working on doing their jobs for around 120 plays. That's roughly 1320 player-plays per game. Take 2% of that and the answer will be far far more than the number of plays that we have large arguments about each week. 98% of what happens is very obvious. I certainly do agree that there are the 2%. That's why I said 98% rather than 100%. And as for your "2 feet" off-target on the pass thing, when you can slow down and stop the video, it's pathetically easy to tell whether the guy put it on the mark or two feet behind allowing the defensive player to get a hand in. It's so easy I can do it, and I'm no genius.. It's so easy the commentators do it within about ten seconds of the play, having looked at in real time and very possibly not having had the chance to look at it again. And if they did look at it again, they didn't have time to use slo-mo or coaches film or all the wheels and gizmos available after the games. It's not that difficult for anyone. And they are extremely good at it. If they weren't, the NFL teams simply would not buy their stuff.

Oh, please. This whole "only the players and coaches know what's happening" thing is utter nonsense. If it were true, nobody would bother watching tape, including the teams. On probably 98% of all plays it's very very obvious what happened. Hell, it's obvious to us on TV what happened most of the time with less than 40 seconds to look at it. Yes, there are occasional plays where it's not certain. When the receiver goes left and the QB throws right, there was a miscommunication, and that leaves a legitimate question for those outside the locker room for who made the mistake. But how often does that happen? It's not even close to one out of ten times, not even on the worst offenses in history. It's rare. It's one of PFF's founding principles, very very clearly stated on their site, that if they're not certain who's at fault, they don't downgrade guys. Honestly, if it grues you out, that's on you. How often are you on here dissecting a play and saying what happened? A lot. How come? You weren't in the locker room. The coaches haven't called you and told you what was supposed to happen. We all do this all the time because because nearly always it's very very obvious what happened. With the benefit of hindsight and slo-mo video, extremely obvious on a massive majority of plays.

Right. It was a crappy OP, and nobody had posted a single thing with substance. I pointed that out. I suppose I could have brought substance to it, but didn't feel I needed to, what with the level at the time.

No, Hap. It's perfectly possible for passes PFF terms "turnover worthy" throws to be intercepted. In fact, that's precisely what a near-majority of INTs are ... they're the result of turnover-worthy passes. A pass that's tipped up into the air and INT'd is not turnover-worthy. A pass that is thrown short into the hands of an LB and INT'd absolutely is considered turnover-worthy by PFF. INTs absolutely can be turnover-worthy. If you'll look at this, you'll see they even have a chart where they look at how many of their various kinds of turnover-worthy throws actually were intercepted. https://www.pff.com/news/pro-pff-qb-grading-most-effective-tool-there-is And a quick explanation, from the same article, written on the PFF site: "Not all turnover-worthy plays become turnovers "As the previous chart shows us, not all turnover-worthy plays will become turnovers. Using 2017 data, throws graded -1.0 were intercepted 34.7 percent of time, throws graded -1.5 were intercepted 58.3 percent of the time, and throws graded -2.0 were intercepted 83.3 percent of the time. They all fit into the turnover-worthy category despite different levels of interception probability, but there is a clear difference between the turnover-worthy throws and the throws graded -0.5 that result in an interception only 2.4 percent of the time. Therefore, it’s fair to put turnover-worthy throws in their own category, despite 48.2 percent of all turnover-worthy throws resulting in interceptions." They divide turnover-worthy throws into categories of horribleness. The -/-/- are the worst throws, and they list 83.3% of them as having produced INTs, for instance. In my post which you replied to, I wondered what they have that INT that was entirely created by the refs graded. You say since it was INT's, it isn't turnover-worthy. So, no, that's wrong. My guess is they either have that INT graded as not turnover-worthy or as the least bad form of turnover-worthy, the -1.0, also called in their chart the "-", as opposed to the "-/-" or the "-/-/-". I'd like to know which it was but unless they tell us about that plays specifically, we'll have to guess. On most plays it's reasonably easy to tell, but all rubrics have grey areas, and that play IMO falls into one.

So, it's bad, and it's about Allen, so it must be wrong. I see how this works. Makes total sense. Excellent arguments, all around, on this thread. Not one person has addressed the substance, yet panties are bunched. To be fair, I loved this comment: Fair point. Wonder how that was graded. Allen's been terrific. PFF acknowledges that. Playing well can sometimes be accompanied by a bad stat here or there. Remember the one about how Rodgers had about the lowest comeback percentage in world history, because he's generally got them ahead? Or Favre's high INTs?

Possible. But they need him.

SWEET!!!!

This, with the exception of your last sentence. I think getting this team to 11-1 has been doing a terrific job. They're not as good as that record would make them seem. He's changed the way Roethlisberger operates, and absolutely maximized him as he gets older. Agreed that early in his career he seemed overrated. But he handled guys who have later proved unhandleable. He integrated Antonio Brown into a team. Got them through last year as a respectable team. He's really really good, in a non-flashy way.

Bayless admits Josh is terrific, loves him. Just loves Baker more, which is a bit weird maybe but has nothing to do with Josh hate. Nick Wright, who I'd never heard of till your post, does have a wacky take. That's two guys. Two. One of whom thinks Allen is great. IMO this insistence on finding Josh hate is like looking at one of the world's greatest arboretums and saying, "See, look at all that dirt."

He was saying that he feels like the Chiefs are better but maybe it's not real, maybe that feeling is a result of just seeing them more often, a kind of cognitive bias.

This.

No. It's directly against the interests of the players and coaches to show poorly. The GM is the only one who can think this way. To think Gase isn't trying is nuts. He's going to be looking for a job. If he looks like a bad coach, he's less likely to get hired.

No, you don't remember that. That's from your own imagination, not reality. Nobody claimed he'd be a future Hall of Famer and and nobody claimed his loss would set us back ten years. Plenty of people thought he was a solid player and that we'd miss him. They were right. He'd have been an upgrade on the Zay Jones - Kelvin Benjamin - Brandon Tate year in 2017. 2018 too. Maybe 2016 when Sammy was on the bench, which was half the year.

Because there are three or four guys who do something certainly does not prove that everyone who isn't used that much is underutilized. In fact, it might point out that the guys who are being used that much are overutilized. Or that some guys - say guys with a significant injury history - shouldn't be used that way. Or that some guys who don't weigh a ton - just picking a number out of the air, a guy who weighs 208, for example - should not be used that way if they are expected not to wear down. I hear you that you're not after Jones, but it absolutely would open major holes in the DL. To repeat myself ... you said elsewhere here that you think they can cut Butler, Jefferson and Matakevich without losing much. I don't see how. Next year our DLs under contract are Addison, Hughes, Epenesa, Daryl Johnson, Butler, Lotulelei, Jefferson, Ed Oliver and Phillips. Cut Butler and Jefferson and they don't have the eight platoon guys that this system demands. They'd have: DEs: Addison, Hughes, Epenesa and Daryl Johnson, and DTs: Lotulelei, Oliver and Phillips That's a group that would need some FAs to plug the gaps. You could replace them in FA for cheaper, but not all that much cheaper, not if you 're looking for quality players.

I would disagree. Many turnovers are INTs and plenty of times they have more to do with things that aren't correlated with violence. Look at Tre White coming off his own route on his last two picks and covering a different guy by reading the QB's eyes. Or a DL seeing he's not going to make it to the QB and laying back and timing his jump to deflect the ball up into the air for someone else to hopefully intercept. Plenty of fumbles also aren't so much about violence as they are about well-timed slaps on an RB or QB who doesn't see you coming. I don't think there's anything that is a good surrogate or a good way to measure it. About all we have is the eye test, and we all seem to see the same teams as the most violent.