Thurman#1

I'll leave that for you. You're the one making the unequivocal claim, not me. Notice I didn't say, "all of them do," just that "plenty of them do." It's not so much your post I reacted to, I guess, as the commonly expressed feeling on here that good people can't be tough enough for football. Which is obvious nonsense but many seem to believe it. People talk about boy scouts, but there are a ton of terrific people who play football extremely well. My list was just the first few high-character ILBs I thought of. But it's true at every position. Look at Kyle Williams. Go back and look at some of my old favorites like Merlin Olsen or Reggie White (who was wacky but a good guy with character). Look at Ronnie Lott, especially his pinkie finger.

No, it isn't me saying it once twice or a million times that means he's not a bust. What I'm doing, not for the second time but for what feels like the eight billionth time, is pointing out the obvious things that show he's not a bust. It's stuff like him making the Pro Bowl last year. That's one of the many things that mean he's not a bust. And yeah, he was the first replacement, which means top three IL in the AFC. That's not "OK." That's very very good. Guys who "have poor instincts," and "never make impact plays" don't go to the Pro Bowl as first replacements or for that matter at all. Both those statements are wild exaggerations. The Jets game video posted above points it out thoughtfully. He does seem to have regressed a bit. But beyond the problems his injury has caused, quite a bit of that is actually the fact that the system just isn't functioning as well this year. Lotulelei's absence is a big part of that but not all of it. There are problems with run fits. I do thank you for pointing out the double print, though. Lately about half the time I hit "save" everything freezes forever and I end up copying what I wrote, hitting "save" again, and skipping to the last page. Sometimes when I get there there's nothing and I'm glad I copied it so I can easily replace the post. Sometimes it's just fine. And sometimes it's a doubled print and I have to edit one of them out. It's frustrating and as long as it goes on I'll probably double-print once in a while. I went back now and edited it out.

I want him on the team as well. Unless we draft a safety high - which seems unlikely - or unless Marlowe or Jaquan Johnson are ready to take over, we'd have to replace him with a lower-priced FA which would likely mean a less effective player. Thanks for the corrections, I screwed that up.

Nonsense. I'm one and I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of others. I was aware there was certainly a chance but also very very aware it wasn't the only possibility.

No, not hardly all of 'em. What part of the 35 - 9 Chiefs win over the Jets was ugly for the Chiefs? Having said that, you're right that this was a big win and a nice win. The Bills haven't managed a lot of timely last-minute wins on forced turnovers at the last minute against the Pats. I was smiling and screaming "Zimmer!!" for about ten minutes after. Luckiest regime since Polian? Fair enough. Thing is, you make your own luck. And they've made theirs. Luck is the residue of design. Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. And all the other quotations about luck. All true. Great win.

Agreed it depends on who shows up. But that goes for Cam too. His first two or three games he was really sharp throwing the ball. Then his COVID layoff and he got worse. But Simms points out that nearly every season he's had a game or two or three when his mechanics get bad and he has problem but then he has shown the ability to make corrections and improve a lot very quickly. So it depends which Newton shows up as well. I hadn't known till yesterday that Harry wasn't playing. With both Harry and Edelman out that really is going to help us. But if anyone can scheme guys open off bunch formations and rub routes and such, it's Belichick and the Pats. I think we've got a good chance but I'm not outright confident. I'll need to see the stake through the heart, the silver bullet, the head injury to the zombie.

Hope you're right. Simms doesn't claim to know what's going to happen. He wants to do his best to make the right prediction but knows he'll miss many. He wants to be thoughtful and have a line of thought that makes sense and gives him a good chance to be right. IMO he achieved that there. Thoughtful. Makes sense. The Bills could certainly prove him wrong. That's what I'm hoping for. And yeah, I loved that Florio line as well.

IMO Belichick has a gene that absolutely prevents this type of behavior. Losing burns him to the core and winning is oxygen to him. Same with every coach in the league, really, though GMs often think a bit different. Dude, please. Exaggeration is one thing, but outright nuttiness is another. They've got some good players over there. Including one NFL MVP, a defense that is still playing very well against the pass and an offense that can run the ball.

That's what Darius said at Thermopylae Until the fat lady sings, it'll be a tough game.

The Beane and McDermott hires look terrific so far. When does the media call them out for their inability to look at 30 other teams for talent? When they don't look at 30 other teams for talent. Which simply hasn't happened so far. If you go look at the 80 man rosters for camps the last four years you'll find how many total guys were brought in? 140? 150? And the list of Panthers comes to 20 if you use the one posted above? Please. Sad argument.

Nonsense. Your count there says far more about you than it does about those players or the F.O. How is it bad to bring in, for instance, Philly Brown on a $690K one-year contract with no signing bonus, and cut him. Is it somehow bad to pay a guy training camp money to come in and be a training camp body? Nonsense. You're supposed to do that with 30 or 35 guys every year. In fact, you have to. It's not a failure. It's business as usual for every single NFL team. Or Jeremiah Sires, who signed a one-year deal for $650,588? Love how he got that extra $588. He turned out to be a bubble guy who stuck around for the season and saw a bit of time on STs and as a third-stringer injury replacement. And that's how he was paid. That's not a bad pickup, it's just fine, particularly in a rebuild year when we were having major cap pressure and were going to have to bring in a bunch of extra low-pricers. We got what we paid for, and that's a lot of the guys on these lists, Philly Browns who cost virtually nothing and were training camp bodies or vet minimum third stringers. As Hapless said, most of those guys were brought in at minimum salaries, many let go without seeing a game check. Bringing a guy in as a camp body and cutting him isn't a bad signing. It's just fine. And that's how most of this list came in. Your list had 21 people, but included Kaelin Clay twice, so taking out one of the Clays leaves us with 20 guys. Here's how they look relative to their contracts: Those just fine, no problem vet min or camp guys: Ryan Davis, Philly Brown, Leonard Johnson, Jeremiah Sirles, Mike Tolbert, Kaelin Clay, L.J. McCray, Captain Munnerlyn, Joe Webb, Robert Thomas Bad Signing: Benjamin Good signings: Lotulelei, Anderson, Marlowe, Coleman who had a vet min type contract and outplayed that, Daryl Williams Decent signing so far at least, but could still go either way: Josh Norman Overpaid so far but it's still to early to be sure: A.J. Klein, Mario Addison, Vernon Butler Most would disagree with me on a guy here and there, but overall that's not bad so far.

Yes, and it's also about the fact that some guys who look bad in some systems can look good in others. Dunno about Worley but he might be worth a shot.

No, it makes it a reasonable opinion that he's playing badly right now. It's just as reasonable to say that even a different guy playing under the circumstances Edmunds is experiencing right now, even if he was playing well, might not be producing good results. Again, was Ray Lewis inefficient in the two or three years after Siragusa left and before Ngata arrived? Most people thought so at the time. After 7 or 8 terrific years he appeared to have started downhill. Weirdly, when they put Ngata in front of him, he suddenly looked sensational again. What a coincidence!!!! But during those wilderness years, when some people said, "He just misses a good space eater," others said things like, "I'll never understand those that feel the need to make excuses for players poor performance." Most felt Lewis had become "a BAD middle linebacker ... right then." Turned out - who'da thought it? - that how things are going around you affects how well you can perform in a complex system.

Yes, picking two sentences, fair enough, it's simplistic. But that wasn't all he said. In the first video he talked for 6 or 7 minutes about this game, making a lot of great points. Also, the idea that because the Pats run defense sucks we'll be able to run with it is hopeful but doesn't make a lot of sense. The Chiefs are allowing 4.9 YPA this year and the Fins 5.0. Those two teams suck against the run yet we went 23 for 84 against KC and 23 for 112 against Miami, both figures well below what the defenses average, and in neither game did we look especially good running it. I hope you're right but I don't find that argument convincing. IMO it'll come down to how well Cam throws. I think the Bills will do much as they have recently on offense passing, a lot of yards but without a ton of points, being forced to go with the shorter game and finding it a bit frustrating. If that's how it looks, I think the Pats will have a great chance. If the Bills can instead punch in a few TDs this time, we'll win going away. My guess is we'll find that difficult, but if Brown is back to his normal level of performance, my confidence will definitely improve. And that low-scoring game that is my guess, will put it in Cam's hands, I think. I'm worried he'll have a better game. Hopefully not.

If he doesn't have the receivers to throw to, how come he looked very good throwing the ball for the first two or three games. I certainly agree it's big that Edelman is out. But Harry isn't bad, the backs catch well and the run game makes it hard to defend the pass game. I agree with you that that's likely to be our defensive approach. I hope it works. I'm more nervous than many on here appear to be.

Totally disagree. Washington had one of the two best QBs in football that year. The Bills had a guy in the top 5 or 6. Washington had an awesome OL, absolutely excellent. To say Rypien turned out a journeyman is reasonable. To argue that he was a journeyman that year is laughable. Rypien was 2nd in TDs, 2nd in QB rating, 2nd in YPA, and 1st in TD/INT ratio. It was weird at the time to wonder what happened to him because his first four years showed a guy improving steadily and becoming a guy who looked like he was going to be elite for a long time. And then he fell apart. We now know what happened as he's come out and talked about his concussion problems, his headaches, concentration problems and how those stole his career from him. Poor guy is in sad shape and will almost certainly prove to be positive for CTE. You look at guys like Lachey, who was riding a streak of three straight first-team All-Pro selections, Russ Grimm, who is often in the Hall of Fame conversation and Joe Jacoby ... that was a terrific OL. The receivers were excellent, the defense dynamic and tough. That was a great roster. Yeah, Joe Gibbs was a great coach, but the reason they were 1st in scoring and 2nd in scoring allowed was because they were a terrific roster playing as a team. But more, the Potomacs had a terrific advantage over the Bills in arguably the one key area of a football game, which was matchups. They, like all of the Bills Super Bowl opponents, came from the NFC East, a division where if you wanted to win you had to have a vicious, smashmouth run game, a wildly physical straight-ahead pound-the-rock attack, powered by absolutely huge offensive lines. Whereas to get out of the AFC East you had to get past Dan Marino, which meant you had to build your team to pass the ball so you could outscore him and you had to rush the passer and cover recievers. The Bills did what they had to do to get out of that division to the playoffs, but it meant building a team that matched up poorly against the teams coming out the NFC East. It was only unfortunate to us that no other division got there to face us in any of those four years. Those teams would pound it down our throats and our small and quick DL couldn't stand up to a whole game of that, and it also kept the ball out of the hands of our offense. They matched up brilliantly against us. As for Marv he was a fine game planner and a spectacular leader, who had to walk a tightrope with the group they had in that locker room. A great coach who has received a lot of backlash since he proved to be such a bad GM. Saban, Levy and Knox as the top three, all great. Then a wide chasm.

Yup, you're right, plenty of 'em do. Bobby Wagner has tremendously high character. Darius Leonard. Luke Kuechly. Milano. Plenty of others.

For the eight trillionth time, Edmunds is recovering from an injury, he's performing in a misfunctioning defense that mostly isn't providing him with what the coach feels an MLB in his defense needs (namely a very good space eater in front of him and to be surrounded by gap-solid responsible players) and in particular having Milano active next to him. He was very good in 2019, which is why he made the Pro Bowl. He does appear to be making some mistakes but an awful lot of it is because of the injury and because the whole system isn't functioning well.

It could come down to that question. But few people or nobody has responded to the other section of the interview I transcribed about Newton's consistent mechanical problems and fixes. Simms says that Cam has had the same sort of mechanical issues he's having now many times during his career for a game or two or three. But that then he's consistently been able to quickly fix the problem when it's addressed and get back to his regular mechanics and his regular performance level. If that happens and he is back to normal next week, we won't be able to sell out to stop the run, confident that Cam can't beat us.

I just went and did research on it. It's a thing I'd never heard of called Termination Pay. If a veteran with four or more accrued seasons who is on the roster for the first game of that season is cut, the rest of his salary is guaranteed. There are a few lawyer-language exceptions. Antonio Brown didn't get his from the Raiders because they claimed he didn't give good-faith effort. It's Article 30 in the CBA. Here's the section about eligibility: "(a) Any player who has completed the season in which his fourth year or more of credited service under the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement Plan has been earned shall be eligible for Termination Pay under this Article if: (1) He is released after his Club’s first regular season game; and (2) He has made the Active/Inactive List of his Club on or after the date of his Club’s first regular season game."

You're right, I'm wrong. I'd never heard of that before. Interesting to learn.

Why would you think that the money for the games he didn't play in would not be available to the Bills on the cap if they cut him? Murphy's salary is NOT guaranteed.

Just the opposite. People want to pretend it's a coincidence that the LBs are playing more poorly against the run this year. But it was in fact wildly obvious that would happen. It was predicted by many, including me, the instant Star opted out, and it's come to pass. Star is far more than serviceable, he's very good. People who go by stats entirely miss Star's value. He frees up the LBs to look great by eating blocks. He'll never be a pass rusher, which is why his salary isn't much higher. He's a guy you want in only on run downs, but on those run downs he makes the whole defense much more effective against the run. You're right that correlation doesn't equal causality. But that's irrelevant. We don't need to confuse them here, the Bills have told us over and over again that Star is a cause and that the effects of having him out there are major and noticeable. He's been a major part of a very very successful defense and the Bills have told you that he's a major reason for that. McDermott knows what his defense needs a ton better than you do. Or me, for that matter. But bringing in a guy they had extensive experience with, paying him more than he'd be worth in other schemes that don't value space eaters, and then guaranteeing his salary the next year and a half tell you very clearly what's going on here, which is that he's a guy they want here. For now and the future. And they don't feel that way because he's "average to below average" or that he's "done nothing but support that decision," both ridiculous statements. Certainly possible they'll get rid of him before 2022 if his game has regressed. If it hasn't, it's quite unlikely. After they guaranteed much of his salary for that year, he would cost $5.1 mill in dead money to cut before the 2022 season. By cutting him they'd save $6.15 mill in salary, a $350K roster bonus, a $250K workout bonus and a $350K Game active bonus if he's active all 16 games. So they'd save $7.1 mill but acquire $5.1 mill in dead money. Cut a guy who they were happy enough with that before the season they guaranteed a year and a half of salary ... all to save $2 mill. In a year when the cap will go back up and when the Bills right now have a projected $103 mill available under the cap. Very unlikely. Bottom line is you may not like him. But they do.

I think the cap saving is even slightly less than that. $4.05 M salary $1.0 M roster bonus $100K workout bonus ... so we'd get out of paying $5.15M, but ... We'd be hit with $1.6 M in dead money. So the total saved would be $3.65 M ... ... unless he collects his contractual Pro Bowl bonus of $400K, and if he makes the Pro Bowl he'll have very easily been worth $4.05 M You're right that $3.65M is not a lot of space and that we wouldn't get a comp pick, and that we would almost certainly have to spend yet more money to bring in an FA to replace him. The OP doesn't make any real sense.

What happened against the Jets is Milano and Edmunds both played a lot in the second half. This defense always plays better when these guys are next to each other.