Thurman#1

That quote is from the books. Yeah, the movie used it, but that's Frank Herbert. EDIT: Ah, someone beat me to it.

The thing about him choosing the plays he likes is about constructing the playbook. It's still Arians making the calls and deciding when all of these plays they like get called. Brady doesn't mind throwing long sometimes. But when ... that's the rub. Arians calls them a lot more than Brady likes, and at times when Brady would rather burn clock and play careful. Again, he didn't say this was all Arians' fault. He said they can't work together, and that from Brady"s perspective those were the wrong calls.

That whooshing sound? It was the point shooting by while you were typing.

IMO, it's far more bad luck. I mean, sure, you talk to them about it and you practice more, but the thing about Hail Marys is that they are only successful somewhere around 5% of the time. And sometimes a 5% chance will happen twice in a row, particularly when Arizona was throwing to maybe the best in-the-air ball winner in the league in Hopkins. With him there it's probably 10% or 15% instead of five. I didn't see obvious bad execution on either play. If the Bills want them to approach things differently then they should absolutely tell them about it, but how would that even be a question. Of course they would do that. Heh heh.

Nice necro-bump. Should warn against knee-jerk reactions and also point out that it often takes more time than we think to see how well a guy can fit a system. However, it won't. Making conclusions too early here is widely prevalent.

Yeah, this. Not surprising, really. Look at how many 4th and ones we've seen an Allen sneak be successful. Look at the top of the chart, "Expected win probability lost by kicking in go situations."

It is Arians' fault. Even if they had called Brady-type plays which had been unsuccessful as the Arians plays were, they would have burned the clock. The Bucs wouldn't have scored but they would have greatly lowered the chances of the opponents scoring. The Brady plays - a run or a short high-percentage pass on first down in this case - would have raised the possibility of a first down there as well. Arians' philosophy is that we'll score enough to make up for it, but if they don't - and they didn't - he's put the team in a bad situation.

He didn't know that the philosophical differences would prove such a big deal. Nor did Arians. Neither guy had been in this situation before, so they didn't know that working with a guy with philosophies that turn out to align so poorly would cause problems. And Lombardi isn't excusing either of the guys, or blaming either guy. He's simply saying they don't work well together. IMO, having read the whole article, he made his case. OP, thanks for posting it. I subscribe but look pretty much only at the Bills content.

Were you predicting the Fins loss to Denver? They could easily lose more than two. So could we of course, but it looks like so far we're just a better team. And yeah, the team should focus on immediate business. If the fans look ahead with imagination, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as we stay aware it's all guesswork anyway.

Why would anyone not think so? The power rankings all have them between about #5 and #9. Of course they're gearing up for it. How much they achieve is another matter, but outside the Steelers and Chiefs they're as good as any team in the conference.

You're reading too much in there. It just means you were behind or in danger of getting behind and pulled it out. It doesn't mean you were losing for much of the game or were outplayed. That's just you there. It certainly can be used in situations where you were outplayed and don't deserve to win. But also situations that are nothing like that.

Good point. Don't think I've ever seen a team win a playoff game by having a miscue or two and winning anyway.

That's nonsense. Last year they started out with a spectacularly easy schedule and ended with a much harder one. This year their 8-3 is much much more impressive. You don't want to get excited about 8-3? That's on you, this is an exciting season. Heh heh.

"Give them a pass"? Who do you think you are? Is your last name Pegula? In any case, nobody needs a pass for a win by ten points. Yet another genuinely bad post.

He was going past the DB but Allen had slightly underthrown it. Five yards further and Diggs catches it running away. And in any case, it was a success. And you can bet is scared the bejeesus out of the Chargers D. Singletary and Moss are both excellent receiving threats. Yeldon too, for that matter. We just don't throw to them much, probably because our WRs are so excellent.

IMO there's no such thing as a Trump-like figure. He's a one-off. Not since Huey P Long. The things that make him so popular, omni-present and hard to beat are his mastery of public relations and his outsider status. There's nobody else out there like that in politics. If there were, he or she would be president if Democrat or a massive and unmistakable figure waiting in the wings and ready to step in if Republican.

Referring to what you say about Belichick there, the 1991 - 1995 Cleveland Browns (whose cumulative record was 36-44) would beg to differ. And the Patriots are 4-6 this year. Yeah, he's still done a good job coaching this year, but no, not everyone is a world-class athlete and some rosters are much much better than others. Also, Belichick isn't really a good example, because he isn't just a coach, he's a GM as well. And through most of his term in N.E. he's actually been a very good GM, though the roster this year is certainly unexceptional.

Yeah, I agree. A lot of the impact that good coaches have is that they aren't bad coaches. Bad ones can really kill a team. Good ones let the roster play up to it's potential though they also do a bit more. You watch, the Lions are going to jettison Stafford one of those years. And if he then find a good situation, expect sudden surprise "improvement" from Stafford.

"Full input to draft"? Not sure what that means. If it means that he can tell Beane what he wants and what he thinks, and that Beane will give it serious consideration, yeah. Beyond that, nobody's ever said anything. In any case, one thing's for sure, and that's that McDermott doesn't have any influence with the Injury Fairy, or for that matter with the COVID Opt-out Pixie. This D would probably look much different with Star in there and if Milano, Edmunds and a slew of CBs hadn't been injured at various points this season. That they seem to be getting better seems to me to indicate that a good part of the problem was the lack of on-field practice time together in the off-season. Particularly at D-line there are a lot of new guys there, and the scheme really only seems to be coming together a bit the last three or four games.

Yeah, um, no.

A healthy Milano is a liability never.

Yup. The last guys we've picked up are, not including guys we've let go and then re-signed like Deon Lacey, Cam Lewis and Lafayette Pitts ... listed in reverse order from the most recent: CB Daryl Worley LB Darron Lee TE Charles Jones LB Ahmad Gooden TE Nate Becker RB Antonio Williams CB Jonatthan Harrison DT Brandin Bryant G/C Jordan Devey DT Chris Slayton WR Jake Kumerow I was only going to go back ten, but the last two were signed on the same day. One Panthers guy, which is around 9% out of a group chosen for recency. Anyone still harping on about this is only showing that their RES has been activated about Carolina. They did step it up among some of the bigger FAs last offseason, but why wouldn't you? By the time the season started it was beginning to seem likely that COVID was going to cause problems with offseason get-togethers. It's not a mistake that most of those Carolina pickups this year were on defense. In a season that looked like it might not have a traditional offseason, why wouldn't you concentrate on guys who had already played in your system and wouldn't be hurt as badly by missed offseason activities?

With Star it was anything but soft. He's been doing a very fine job here, though many fans didn't get it till they saw what the defense looked like without him there. And outside his injury, Ed Oliver has been playing really really well since the middle of last year. Softer now, though. 1-tech is the position where McDermott wants a big strong block-absorbing space eater, and without Star we haven't got a good one.

Just for the record, there are excellent arguments that the GOAT is someone like Otto Graham or Unitas or Montana. Even Manning or Rodgers. Brady's career is without question sensational and it's hard to imagine defending anyone putting him outside of the top five or six, but beyond that it's not all that cut-and-dried. And yeah, this walking off without the handshake thing is a terrible look.

You can kid yourself as you often do - remember how you loooooooooooooooooooooved Tyrod, Trans? Remember "near-elite"? - but the idea catchable and uncatchable, no matter how you set up your criteria, is subjective. The fact that we regularly have arguments on here about dozens of catches a year makes that very clear. It's subjective as hell. Arguing otherwise is kidding yourself. And again, catchable and uncatchable doesn't particularly address accuracy. It's a much easier bar to get over. Sure, uncatchable balls are inaccurate. But Drew Brees, as an example of a really accurate guy, would call tons of catchable balls inaccurate failures. And he'd be right. A ball that forces a guy with a chance to get YAC to stop is inaccurate. A ball that forces a guy to reach back on a play when nobody's ahead is inaccurate even if it's caught. In many cases a catchable ball just has to get into a target that's maybe 8 - 10 feet wide and 10 feet high. Not always. If the coverage is extremely tight it can be smaller but very often we're talking a huge target, so big that hitting it doesn't begin to show accuracy. And yeah, you provided examples, but that proves nothing. When I did my studies, I annotated every play. It's the way to show you're working hard at avoiding confirmation bias. And a guy convinced for three years that Tyrod was a franchise QB is no stranger to confirmation bias. You give a few examples, but we don't know on how many others you let your biases take over. There's no way to know. I'd been riding you on that years before you began this study. You weren't willing to make it bulletproof. The reason why is what observers have to look at. It's why what you have there is a wonderful collection of your opinion. And again, nothing wrong with that. Opinions are fine, whether they make sense or not. Well, you've said much the same thing your past few posts. Fair enough, nothing wrong with that either, but anyone who's watched you talk Buffalo QBs knows that you will never not get the last word even if it means a thread drags on till it's necrotized. Me, I used to crack myself up by urging you on. But I'm over that.