Thurman#1

I laughed when I saw this, then as I read further I realized you mean it? Good lord, they're not in the top ten. Look at the success percentages of the best in the league and compare it to average guys and it's generally a ten to twenty percent difference, and when an average kicker attempts maybe 30 kicks a year, and understanding that an awful lot of the percentage comes down to how many shorter or longer kicks the guy attempted ... Not even close. The highest-paid kicker gets $5M a year, the tenth best gets $3.86M a year. That's how valuable teams feel the difference is. 16th is $2.7M. Only 22 of them make more than a million a year. If they were that valuable, someone, either a smart GM or a dumb one, would offer Justin Tucker $10M a year. They don't. Simply because spending that much on a kicker doesn't give you an equivalent competitive advantage. How about a better pass rusher gets the QB to throw an incompletion on any play of that drive and completely eliminates the kicker even having a chance. These guys make a difference, but only on a very few plays and the percentage success differences are just not very large. The three points (or the miss) isn't a result of the kicker. It's the result of the work of every player on every play on the drive. The kicker has a part, but a lot larger part is whether the drive ends on, say the opposition 26 or their 42 or your own 35.

All you have to do is look at how high guys are drafted and how much they're paid. It all starts with the QBs and radiates outward. The bigger the effect on the qb, whether that effect is negative or positive, the more valuable. 1) QB 2) Pass rusher 3) Protector, which right now still has LTs as the most valuable 4) DB 5) WR After that it gets harder to figure because they're closer to average.

I haven't followed their QB situation closely enough to comment much. As a general principle, though, I think the whole idea of not being able to take a young guy out once you've put them in is greatly overblown. Generally agree with you here, though. I think Flores is good too.

Palmer sure didn't allude to it in this video. Up above somebody said they thought they'd heard this, but there's no link. Frankly, it doesn't sound like something Palmer would say, about Darnold or anybody else. I didn't go through this whole thread. Did anyone link to it? If not ..... I'm willing to believe it if someone points out where it's said. I'm not saying anyone is lying or anything like that. But people remember stuff wrong all the time. If someone can come up with where Palmer said that, I'd be really interested. Till then, it seems doubtful to me. As for Darnold's future, I think he's got a chance to be good. Some guys take longer than others, (Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees among others) and some guys don't get the situation they need until later (Alex Smith and Rich Gannon are the first who spring to my mind). I think he's been in an awful situation, and yet we still see some good things from him, though we certainly see bad things too. That happens in bad situations. Still a ton to prove, of course. Far from a sure thing. But nobody's saying he's a sure thing, particularly at this point.

I don't like the Fins, but 15-17 in the first two years of a rebuild is not bad at all. Flores does indeed look like a damn good coach.

Diggs missed practice today with an oblique injury. They don't say for sure but it's likely to have happened in the game. Odds are pretty good, probably, that he plays, but it's just another explanation point on the problems that a decision like this can cause. You want a healthy Stefon Diggs this time of year. Health of your key guys is by far the most important thing.

Maybe. That's why people are being extremely careful about COVID as well. It's not an accident that Tre White, Jerry Hughes and Addison took the day off. I bet Olivier Vernon wishes they'd let him rest last week, though the risk/reward ratio was totally different in that case because they absolutely had to win. Vernon was injured that game, and that going forward will hurt their chances of advancing very far in the playoffs. Not that I think they were going very far anyway, but that will hurt them. We did stay lucky, though, no major injuries, and they did take many out around halftime. It's not that the Fish wouldn't have been demoralized. It just would have happened a week later. Hell, we might have beaten them with our backups last week. Losing with our backups - again, if that had happened because it's no sure thing - would not have taken an ounce away from their swagger. When you look back at teams that did take out starters the last week and lost, you do find some who lost, of course. Some teams lose no matter which way they play it. But what you don't see is teams losing swagger. Losing a game with your backups doesn't change the feelings of any team. Everyone knows why they lost in that situation. Look at the Pats the year they rested Tom Brady with just a few snaps in Week 17. in 2014 and lost 17 - 9 against the Bills. Did they lose their swagger because they were only a 12-win team instead of 13? Please. The idea's ridiculous. Instead they went out and brought home a Lombardi trophy. Did the Ravens lose their confidence and morale when they sat Flacco after he went 4 for 8, and most of their best players played little or not at all in Week 17 of 2012, losing to Cincy? Hell, no, they went out and won a Super Bowl. You don't lose your morale from that. No Bills would think, "Sure, we sat Diggs, Allen, Hughes, Tre White, Milano, Edmunds and Hyde, and Beasley's out this week, and even more in the second half, but ... we lost to MIami ... gosh, I wonder if we're just not as good as we had thought? Wouldn't make sense to think so. Morale is indeed a huge factor. But losing a game with the backups doesn't seriously affect morale.

I got your point. Everyone has. The three of us are disagreeing with your point. Of course you can separate context. Not perfectly, of course. But you can watch the throws, see if they're getting where they need to be and see if the decision to throw there was poor. And Allen had a lot of poor throws and bad decisions that year, a lot. Mixed in were some terrific throws. But not enough. Nobody would say, for instance, that you can't really tell if he's playing very well right now because you can't separate his performance from the terrific context he's playing in. Wouldn't make sense to say that. Of course you can tell he's playing sensational, even though the context he's in is absolutely excellent. And I couldn't agree more that he was raw as hell. He said so himself in his Albert Breer interview. Beside the point, though. Performance isn't about justifications or what you are. It's strictly what you do. I think we're all saying that yeah, he really was terrible that first year in the pass game, though his 2019 performance couldn't be called that with any degree of legitimacy. In any case, I think we can all agree that whatever we think about his old performance, it's a joy to watch him now.

It ain't failing when you bring in a Super Bowl title.

Gotta agree. Our guy was robbed. Taylor has a bigger body of work but of those four plays, Antonio's was best.

Well, his throws really were very inconsistent in 2018, context aside, with many wild misses and poor choices. I think most would and did call that a poor performance and for good reason. You're right that he wasn't in a good situation. But you were still able to see how well his passes reached their targets and how often he made awful choices. You'd see an incredible dime and then he'd airmail one. Consistent inconsistency. Extremely raw. In a word, terrible, if you were judging him by NFL standards. Did he show potential at times? Sure, but so do many guys who end up on the scrapheap. Having potential means squat. Achieving your potential, as he has this year, now that's something real. Which was understandable for a guy who they wanted to sit for a year the way KC did for Mahomes. He wasn't meant to play that year. He was in a terrible situation, but he himself was also really bad in the pass game, though his attitude, competitiveness and his running gave hope. What was also really encouraging was seeing the improvement. His first few games of 2019 he seemed to be the same guy, performing at the same poor level. But after that Pats game, there was a very real improvement.

See what I mean, Bill? Again, no Brady was not 11-3. You'll find that that was the New England Patriots. Brady was one of the 11 guys on the offense, specifically the one who threw for 189.5 yards per game, who threw for 2843 yards in 15 games, threw 18 TDs and 12 INTs and put up a rip-roaring 86.5 passer rating. He was a game manager, really for his first four or five years, putting up slight but steady improvement till the light well and truly came on and he turned into "Tom Brady" in year 8. And again to the again, same with Brees. He didn't win those games. It wasn't Brees who started 6-1 and finished 8-8 in his second season, his team did. He was the guy who managed 60.8% completions that second year you refer to, who threw 17 TDs and 16 INTs, who was a dink-and-dunker extraordinaire at 6.2 YPC, and whose passer rating was 76.9 that year. We saw him suddenly take the huge leap forward in year 4, going from 11 TDs and 15 INTs in year 3 (2003) to a 2004 of 27 TDs and 7 INTs. His passer ratings in his first four years were 94.8 on 27 attempts, then 76.9, then 67.5 and they drafted Rivers in the offseason and Brees swashbuckled his way to a 104.8.

Again, an awful lot of the reason he had so many game-winning drives was that the defense was so terrific and kept us in so many games where the offense didn't do much. You're right that he was better at the end of games, but that doesn't make you a good quarterback. Being consistent throughout games is what it takes. Allen absolutely did make terrific progress this year, he made a huge leap. Solid progress last year, a monster advance this year. Nope, I categorically refuse. Until somebody repeats the same nonsense. Sorry to be so repetitious, Bill, and everybody. But it ain't as if I say it till somebody once again tells us how many games Josh is responsible for winning.

Josh Allen didn't get us into the playoffs last year with two weeks to spare. I think if you go back and check out the box scores, you will find there were 11 players on the field pretty much at all times. That was the Buffalo Bills who did that, and frankly the defense was a lot more responsible for their success last year than the offense. The defense was edging on elite last year while the offense was pretty average. For the eight billion and first time, wins are not a QB stat. They are a team stat.

If you didn't hear that the coaching staff was a major reason for Mahomes being successful so early, I think you've been listening to the wrong people. It's been said a lot, because it makes a lot of sense. He sat the whole year and learned behind Alex Smith who by every account was wildly helpful, and with Andy Reid helping him a ton. Reid is a quarterback whisperer. He has absolutely been huge in Mahomes' fast development.

I don't think any but a very few say he was terrible the last two years. He was pretty bad the first year but there's no way to say that about last year. Last year he was decent. If he'd frozen there, he wouldn't have lasted more than about four years in Buffalo. He wasn't good, but he was OK, and he really did progress during the year. That Pats game was a massive milestone, he was awful, and he took that to heart and simply looked a lot better afterwards. When the occasional person does say he was terrible the last two years, they're being lazy.

The whole "nobody wants to play them" thing applies to the lower-ranked teams in each conference. You don't hear it about the Chiefs or the Bills because it's already so wildly obvious that nobody wants to play the two best teams.

That is a great quote. But this isn't "all of a sudden." That's nonsense. Pretty much everyone has known this team is absolutely a Super Bowl contender for weeks now.

Even if we'd have lost yesterday because of sitting our guys, I'd have absolutely loved the chance to play Miami. We should beat Indy, but Miami would have been a much easier opponent. I hear you. It's an interesting argument, but I don't think the Steelers are saying to themselves, "Gosh, the Browns beat us just last week. Sure, we weren't playing Roethlisberger or many of our other best guys, but I don't have much confidence we can beat the Browns because of what happened the other day." And I don't think the Browns feel any better about beating the Steelers next week because of what happened last week. Do you?

I didn't mention preseason. What are you talking about? Do you think that teams feel it's a necessity to play all their starters all game long in the preseason? This makes no sense. That's fine that you were in a war zone. If you were in the military I thank you for your service, but like the preseason it has nothing to do with this discussion. It's all risk and reward. You play those ratios smart if you want to consistently maximize your chances. We took more of a risk than we had to, for what turned out to be zero reward. Pittsburgh lost, which it always seemed likely to do. Luckily, we didn't have any major injuries result. That's good luck. The Bucs did not get so lucky, with Mike Evans out for at least a week and maybe more. That could have a huge impact on their playoff fate. Thank goodness we didn't suffer such bad luck, but we could have, and for what now turns out to have been zero gain, it was taking too much of a risk. In any case, thank goodness it worked out OK.

No, there wasn't. Scoring quickly is not a weakness. They weren't just the highest scorers, they scored 51 points more than the 5th highest scorers. A low time of possession wasn't a weakness, it was a side effect of their extreme productivity. And Kelly early in his career was plenty mobile. No, he wasn't an antelope, but he could move decently. Lost that in the last two or three years and that's how people remember him, but he could run when he had to and evaded sacks well. And not being special (the TEs) isn't a weakness. We got 9 TDs out of the TEs in 1990, for instance. And over 500 yards and excellent blocking, in a season when the best TE in the league managed 747 yards. McKeller was 7th in the league for yards among TEs. That's not a weakness. Certainly not an extreme strength either, but far from a weakness.

Yup. Still, this offense is terrific.

Looks like a creditable report. But I'll believe it when I see it.

Getting excited is fine. Thinking you know who you'll play even if you do win is just defective thinking. The OP, not you.

Unfounded assumptions all the way, One game against Indy is all we know.