Thurman#1

Yeah, cutting guys would clear some money. But doing that would also open massive holes across the starting lineup which would then have to be filled with free agents which would cost pretty much the same amount and would then require a lot of time to learn to work together. And that's all before they sign their draftees and do their best to re-sign some combination of Feliciano, Milano and Daryl Williams. We're not going to see big spending in FA, it's a very very safe bet. They will likely let go two or three, maybe even four of those guys you list up above, but then they would have to replace them, which will cost money. 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. You could get a cheaper STs guy than Matakevich, but if you want him to be good, it wouldn't be all that much cheaper.

Yeah, they allowed a lot of points to Arizona and Seattle. So does everyone. And you're right that "having a decent game doesn't mean they don't kinda suck." But they didn't just have a decent game. They've had five solid games in a row on defense. But hey, if you want to miss that, it's your business, really. Pretty much everyone else sees it, not just locally but nationally. But again, you wanna be behind the curve, that's up to you. If they were healthy they'd be Super Bowl contenders. They're very unhealthy, though. I'm a bit worried too, but not wildly so this game. I do expect them to be able to run on the Bills a bit, though.

And if we had theoretical cap money to bring in the theoretical elite TE available on the market.

There are a few times you pay running backs. None of those times is when you have about $3 mill under the cap this year and about $6 mlll next year ... before you even sign your draftees. None. We're not going to be getting anyone even mildly expensive next year.

Wow, interesting. And to be #4 in blitz percentage and #25 in hurry percentage is crazy good.

I searched for this before posting, and was surprised not to find it her on the boards yet. Mods, if I missed something, please feel free to fold it into another thread. https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buffalo-bills/2020/12/bills-matt-milano-almost-back-impact-on-aj-kleins-role-tremaine-edmunds-a-true-mlb.html "Last week against the Los Angeles Chargers, Klein was the star, finishing with a game-high 14 tackles and 1.5 sacks. But Edmunds was arguably just as good. Pro Football Focus gave Klein a 91.0 grade in run defense and Edmunds just barely lower at a 90.7. In Edmunds last three games he’s received overall grades of 62.3, 63.6, and 74.2. The highest single-game grade he registered in his first 7 games was a 55.5. "Klein played with 5x first team All Pro middle linebacker Luke Kuechly in Carolina and watched him play the position as well as anybody has done it this century. He said Edmunds is a smart player whose preparation and leadership make him stand out. He said Edmunds is a true “Mike” linebacker. “ 'When you watch him on film not many guys that are his size can move and cover like he does,' Klein said. 'To be able to be that downhill, physical guy that he is, not only his skill set physically but his skillset mentally. How he approaches the game and how he understands the game, how he studies - he is a true ‘Mike’ linebacker and that’s where he belongs. You can see him, he’s sideline to sideline making plays all across the field. ... He really is something special to watch. It’s fun to be able to play with him.' ” ------------- This should end the discussion. But it won't. There are plenty of people who think they're way smarter and know more about the Bills defense than guys who play on it or coach for it. We'll doubtless hear from them. But let's hear none of the "Well, he had to say that," nonsense, because it's just not true. All he had to say was - and this is true of every player or coach - is the Crash Davis cliches. Yeah, you can't say bad things of a teammate. But it's totally fine to restrict yourself to the usual, "He gives 110% eight days a week and 25 hours a day," or "I want him beside me in an alley fight," or "He's a good good player. Works hard and it shows," or "I want him in my foxhole with me," or "I love going to war with that guy" or "True Buffalo Bills spirit. A tough guy who always brings it," the usual copy-and-paste sayings. Those are what you have to say. When you get very specific about things, you're going far beyond what you have to say and you're saying what you believe. Klein wasn't asked about whether Tremaine is a Mike. He simply said what he sees and knows.

Best of luck to him. He'll be remembered here.

They used coverage against Mahomes. It worked very well but KC just said, oh ok, we'll just run all game.

1) The likelihood of them signing an expensive FA next year with $2.9 Mill left under the cap to roll over to next year and $4.8M available next year ... effectively zero. Expect our most expensive FA to be barely mid-range. 2) And plenty of people play defense. Not all play sensational defense but most of the best teams play good defense. The difference between the 2018 Chiefs and the 2019 SB winners was picking up two defensive difference makers (Mathieu and Frank Clark) and getting a lot better on that side of the ball. The Saints have a terrific defense, as of course do the Steelers and Ravens. So do the Rams, Colts, Dolphins and the Niners, who if they weren't horribly injured would be easily a top ten team. 2) A TE and an RB in rounds one and two? That might not be zero but it's wildly low. RB isn't one of their top five needs. TE might be top 5 but they're unlikely to address it with a first-rounder.

Disagree away. They were really good against the Cardinals, with the exception of the Hail Mary, which was mostly lucky. Two turnovers and did plenty to win until the Hail Mary. Good against the Seahawks too. Four turnovers, for Pete's sake. They set up Allen and the offense for a bunch of their points. Considering those are two of the absolute best offenses in football, yeah, they played well. Great? No. Good? Six turnovers in two games against two terrific offenses? Yeah. And I noticed you didn't say anything about the Aaron Schatz tweet. Why is that?

Yeah, but that's not answering the point you replied to. He said they're rounding into shape in the last four or five games. Think if we looked at plays allowed/drive, yards allowed/drive and points allowed/drive over the last few weeks they'd be 26th, 24th and 25th in the league? 114 points allowed in the last five games, and that includes the Seahawks, Cards and Chargers. Think that's somewhere in the mid-twenties in rank? Ten defensive turnovers in the last five games. Think that's below average? 355.8 YPG during that time, which is 17th. And yeah, "they have allowed 30+ points in 2 of their last 3 games. Allowed 400+ yards in 2 of their last 3 games," as you say. Think that might have something to do with their last three games being against the Seahawks, Cardinals and Chargers? They're look like they're coming around.

Yeah, JP Losman. And also Josh Allen early in his career. If you don't think Allen is in a wildly better situation now than he was as a rookie, and that that has been a huge help to him, I don't know what to tell you. Put this year's Josh Allen onto the 2018 Bills team and he'd still be good, but throwing to Zay Jones, Kelvin Benjamin and Robert Foster behind the protection of a Dawkins-Ducasse-Bodine-John Miller-Jordan Mills OL, he'd be nowhere near as good as he is now. The reason people are making those excuses for Darnold is that doing so makes sense. It's the smart thing to think. Coaching and situations can destroy QBs. That's a thing. David Carr is the best example, but there are plenty of others. Tannehill could never amount to anything in Miami, and with a coach who put in a system that fit him, voila. And Losman isn't a bad example, actually. They took him from a situation where he was actually starting to do well and look pretty good in a gun-slinger's offense in 2006 and they fired the OC and brought in Fairchild who ran a dink-and-dunk timing offense that was a complete mismatch for Losman's abilities. It's not clear he would ever have been a success, but if he had had a chance, bringing in Fairchild destroyed it.

Nah. Bridgewater has a functioning o-line protecting him. Darnold does not. Not that that o-line is good, it's not especially, but it's far more functional than the one in the Meadowlands. Darnold's in an awful position, and will be better elsewhere as his career progresses. Also, having DJ Moore opposite you will draw more safeties away from a guy than having Breshad Perriman. Darnold will be better, but how much better is still a legit question.

Yeah, I think it's clear that the "we" was the coaching staff. He was taking responsibility. One of the few things he's done there I've respected.

Dude, please. You say his unamortized bonus made it untenable to release him outright. Not true. He'd have cost them $7.8M in dead money. More, they could have spread that over two years. And his original contract called for $6.25M and he was due a roster bonus of $500K. In other words, they would have lost about $1 million overall. That was very very far from untenable when they did the new deal on February 11th. They still had about $80 mill on the cap at that point. So to say that it was untenable to cut him is simply untrue. Not only was it tenable, it would have actually saved them money that first year if they'd cut him after the deadline. The reason they didn't cut him was the simplest in the world, they wanted to keep him. So your argument is that they didn't want to lose $1 million by releasing him ... so their way of handling that was to give him yet more guaranteed, making him yet harder to cut. Sorry, dude, it simply doesn't make sense in any world. If you want to cut a guy, you don't give him a longer guarantee, not if your brain is larger than a lentil. And you are greatly misquoting Feliciano when you say that Star opted out because his pay was guaranteed. Nonsense. Was that a factor? Sure, maybe. Know what the major factor was? I'll give you a hint, it has killed 250,000 Americans and it's still going. Let's see a link to where Feliciano says the reason he opted out was because his pay was guaranteed. "A league where there isn't really such a thing as a running down anymore" you say? Yeah, fair enough. Ask Tennessee when their running downs are. First, second, third and fourth downs. Yes, passing is the priority. But you act as if this is something new. It's very far from new. It's been so for about 20 years now, and it certainly was true when they signed Star to that $50m contract. Last year the team with the lowest pass percentage was passing around 42.5% of the time (Ravens) and the highest pass percentage was 65.4% (Falcons), with the average and median about 57%. This year 46.0% for the lowest passing percentage (Ravens) and the highest is 64.9% (Bears). Median and average are both, again, about 67%. There has been very little change. Yes, passing is the priority. Has been for years and years. But if you abandon run defense, the good teams will be thrilled to say, "Hey, thanks for the free six yards. We'll take that all day." That's what Kansas City did to us. Remind me, what down was the running down for the Chiefs against us when they rushed 46 times? You're missing the point on Star. A guy like Star is precisely what you need if you want to commit most of your resources to the passing game. Commit them all to the passing game and you watch the pitiful Patriots offense run us over and nearly win the game. If Star is there, he makes it much tougher to run so you can then use the rest of your front four guys who are lighter and better at pass defense and yet still be decent at stopping the run. No Star and teams can just bully their way down the field until you have to start using eight man boxes and then they go back to the pass. You need a guy like Star on downs when they can run or pass. With him in there, he's destructive enough against the run that your otherwise light front can handle it. When you know they'll pass you yank him out. Suggesting that you "get your DT's to do the 1T dirty work in small doses and in return for good work give them one-gap reps," ignores the fact that none of them are good at space-eating. Zimmer appears to be about the best we have and he's not good.

Yeah, you're right they didn't do anything to get a second big 1-tech. There seems to be an extremely obvious reason for that ... Star opted out on July 28th. There are very few guys who can do what Lotulelei does, and they were all gone. They don't just need a big guy, they need a big guy who's a space-eater and a good one. Nobody was out there, and particularly not as they had already spent most of their cap this year. And cap is even more important this year with next year being a year where the cap ceiling will drop so much. Yeah, they're taking a different approach, as that's their only realistic choice this year. They've always played eight deep, that's nothing new, that's McD's modus operandi, and yet he still brought in Star and then guaranteed his salary for another year and a half well before he opted out. Star (or someone fulfilling the same function) is precisely the guy who lets McDermott set up most of the rest of the defense to attack the opponent's passing offenses. And as for not having a backup Lotulelei, it's not un-Beanelike. It's what they did in Carolina as well. They have another guy to rotate in, but he's not someone they spend much money or draft capital on. It's the way they operate. For most of his time in Carolina his backups were guys like Micanor Regis and Colin Cole.

It's funny how when people talk about their "cutting Star's pay," they never talk about the fact that they also guaranteed his salary for a season and a half. They also never talk about how much the cut in pay amounted to ... which is that in a $50 million five-year contract they cut his pay by $1,750,000, total. In combination with guaranteeing an extra year and a half, that is pretty much the opposite of saying they don't need Star. They committed to him. Yeah, they cut Vincent Taylor. Likely because he wasn't good enough. And yeah they added Zimmer, who's undersized. There weren't any good huge 1-techs available at that point, and especially not when we were already running on vapor in terms of the cap. Yeah, they played 6 guys in the box at KC. And you somehow think that didn't have everything to do with prioritizing stopping KC's pass game? Really? That shows a profound misunderstanding, honestly. KC saw what we were doing and said, "Fine, fine. Thanks, we'll just hammer the ball through the light middle of your DL. Thanks, guys." Not having Star in that game made it easy for them to run, and they took full and complete advantage. And yeah, they prioritize pass defense. That's not something new. It's precisely what McDermott's defense has always done. Having a Lotulelei in the middle greatly helps balance that out so teams can't just do what New England and KC did in response. He's the weight in the middle that allows them to have the rest be lighter and prioritize pass defense. When they get an excellent 1-tech space-eater back next year in Star, one who they've already committed to in the long-term, they'll be very happy indeed.

They blitzed a ton against the rookie QB last week. Against Murray and Wilson, not so much. Blitzing isn't the change, I don't think. It's just something they look at game to game. Unpredictable fronts, overload rushes, interesting variations on rushes, yes. Looks to me like they've just gotten healthier and figured out better how to work together and blend the newer guys in.

No. Could they get there theoretically if they peak at the right time? Sure. But better now? No way. Dr. Z picked them as champions in S.I. before the playoffs that first year, the year the Pats went 19-0. Their defense had just become healthy. In their last game they had played the best game anyone had played against the Pats all year long, just barely losing 38 - 35, when nobody else had scored more than 28 against NE that year. I haven't the slightest doubt they thought they had an excellent chance.

Nonsense. You say, "when it finally has reached the point where it is the identity of a perennial playoff franchise ...", dude, please. A "perennial playoff franchise" doesn't make the playoffs in two of the previous five years. Worse, both times they made it, they lost in the wild card game. I liked Ted Washington a lot too, but they were a team without a quarterback. And it's not like they didn't build a terrific defense, and quick. They did. By 2003 they were excellent on D and DVOA has the 2004 Bills as one of the top ten defenses of all time. What they didn't do was bring in a quarterback.

In one sentence, maybe that's close to the best that can be done. The best teams are nearly always the best drafters. One problem that I see in this thread - having read only the first and last pages - is that it's not clear whether we're talking about now or over the long term. Over the long term you're often looking at guys who aren't there anymore. Ozzie is gone. How good are the new Ravens guys going to be? Hard to be sure, really. Are you looking at the guys who are in control around the league now? If so, many to most are too new to say with much surety. Beane looks significantly above average but not elite (the 2017 draft looks very strong with three foundational guys but no Beane, the 2018 also looks good with two foundational guys, one guy who appears to be foundational for Cleveland, in Teller, and the 3rd and 4th rounders not clear yet in Harrison and Taron Johnson, the 2019 draft looking pretty good so far with Oliver, Ford and Singletary good bargains, Knox underachieving so far but with potential and the two Johnsons and Sweeney looking solid, and the 2020 group looking OK to good so far for a draft without a 1st rounder but really it's too early to know) but it's hard to say for sure. People want to avoid the obvious ... that you can't really judge thoroughly without waiting for three years or so. And Beane's first draft was two and a half years ago.

Like hell he looked like Star. Star is vastly better at what McDermott needs from a 1-tech. Before the injury Harry looked like he eventually could be a good one, maybe. Since the injury, not close. None of the 1-techs we have are anywhere near as good as Star at keeping the blockers off the LBs.

Agreed that both guys are moving to the middle. But (at least Lombardi thinks that ...) there are certain parts of how they each work that they can't surrender on, that can't be compromised, and that these incongruent world views won't allow them to work together successfully. I think he's got an interesting point. Maybe they can work it out. But maybe not.

Yup. The other thing the OP (dopily) said was giving a list of great coaches. Out of his list, one had won a Super Bowl in his first three years, one, (Belichick first won one in year seven, after five years in Cleveland. Tomlin was the only one) and Tomlin was taking over a team that had won a Super Bowl two years earlier under Cowher. This thread is wooden-headed.

I suspect your depression may spring instead from an unconscious realization of your own limitations in terms of ability to start threads that are worth a crap. Just my two cents.