Thurman#1

That's ridiculous. There's nobody ready to replace him. I suppose you're right that maybe they could draft someone but the idea that they should use one of their top couple of picks on a safety to play in 2021 instead of say a pass rusher or an LB, just to save $3.6 mill is just seriously bizarre. If we did cut him we'd have to bring in a safety as an FA, which would cost money.

You're a Londoner, Bill? Great city. I've visited twice. My favorite time there was when I visited at around age 15 and punk and post-punk were big there and you couldn't see a lot of good live music in Albany, NY as a 15 year-old. I saw Squeeze and Wreckless Eric live, The Damned, and a few others. Came home with about 50 vinyl albums of new bands I hadn't heard of before. Walked past Roger Bannister's house, which was huge for me. Loved London. Spent 20 years in Tokyo, which I absolutely loved as well. Now I'm in a smaller Japanese city.

Big Coben fan here. He writes good stuff.

The Pats - Bills content starts around 42:00. Some excerpts: Burmeister: What's going on with Cam Newton? Simms: Well, he's off. No doubt about that. Simms argues that the Pats last week were a terrible matchup against the Niners, as the Niners are "a run-first-centric team" and Shanahan's the run genius of football. And the Patriots on defense are built to stop passing offenses. He argues Belichick tries to scare you out of runs by packing the box, but then backs away, and some of the eight guys in the box are littler guys than are usually up there and wouldn't be especially effective against the run. Simms: "What you've got to do is go, ' Oh, OK, we're outnumbered in the box, so what, that guy's 195 pounds, that guy's 205 pounds, our right guard can block both of them with his right arm.' " And Shanahan stuck with the run. Asked what he thought were the Pats biggest offensive problems he said offensive line injuries and post-COVID Cam hasn't been the same after missing three weeks of football. They both thought his motion is off right now. But what made me a bit worried is something Simms said about that. Simms: "[Newton] gets into this almost once a year his whole career. ... where his front shoulder gets way high in the air." Goes on to say (quite a bit later) that Newton has had this problem many times before for a week or two or three and then either he or a coach figures it out and corrects it and he starts playing better again. ... and ... Simms: "And now they've got Buffalo this week, and that's the perfect team for them. Again, matchups. ... The Bills can't stop the run and they can't run the ball, so they have to throw it every play. Perfect for New England. So don't be shocked if New England upset Buffalo this week." And later, his preview of the game: He and Florio both pick the Pats, saying the Bills strength is passing and the Pats strength is stopping the pass, and that on offense the Pats strength is running while the Bills weakness is stopping the run. Makes some sense. If they're right, we'd better do a good job in the run game on both sides of the ball. Hopefully Feliciano's return will make a real difference. Whattya think?

Yeah, taxes are higher. More opportunity too, though. Fair enough that people who don't live in big cities aren't necessarily all that impressed by them. The ones that are impressed tend to move there, and that's why the population in our biggest cities and cities all over the world is rising. If you don't like cities, you'll tend to end up elsewhere still not liking cities, So yeah, people who don't live in them don't like them. It's like saying people who regularly visit bakeries and buy cakes aren't as much into ice cream as those who frequent Baskin-Robbins. True, but it doesn't show much.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/rankings/average/quarterback/ Here's a listing of QBs ranked by average salary. Who of the top ten is overpaid? You shouldn't overpay them. But overpaying is all but impossible these days. A great QB really is worth what you pay him. The trick is to not give a high salary to a QB who won't play very very well. Guys like Carr put you in a spot because sometimes he seems worth it and other times not. The Goff and Wentz deals had looked questionable. Now they look good, though Philly has other problems. People blame teams that backtrack on QB salaries, but mostly it's just bad roster building. Yes, it's harder to have success when you're paying your QB a lot. Know what's tougher? Having success while your QB sucks. If you get a guy, you have to pay him. Who are the best teams in the league? The Steelers, Chiefs, Packers and Seahawks? Who after that? The Titans, Bucs, Saints, Ravens, Bills, and Rams, maybe? Yeah, a few teams there have guys on rookie contracts, but most are paying QBs very big or huge money, and the ones who have young QBs look like they will pay those guys when it's time.

Cutting and trading him would have the same cap impact for the Bills. That's not true of guys whose salaries are guaranteed, but the Murphy's guarantee has long been paid. In either case, the unamortized signing bonus due will go into dead cap. The Bills will save the salary he's due and his Per Game Active Bonus, and they would save this whether he's traded or cut. The roughly $3.5 mill we'd save (not counting that whoever replaces him on the roster would have a cost that should be subtracted from that $3.5 mill to understand the financial impact of the move) wouldn't be nothing, but IMO it's not worth dumping if you get nothing back. They're hoping to get something, if the report is true.

... and has been playing injured. It isn't all that difficult to diagnose a screen pass even if it's not thrown. The QB will look at it and the RB/WR/TE will be trying to find space and looking back at him, and some linemen will be getting out in front of it. People over-estimate how difficult it is to watch film. It's pretty easy. It's mostly very very easy. That's not what coaches do that brings them the big bucks. The hard part of what they do is trying to figure out what the opponent will do before they do it. That's the stuff that's tough. Figuring out what they did after they did it, when you have film, just isn't all that difficult generally.

Yup.

It's interesting. A quick check of his snap counts shows he played less than 200 snaps on defense last year in KC, 160 to be precise. Some of that relates to his four-game suspension, but still, 160 is not a lot by any standard. I'm curious to see what they get out of him. You're probably not the only one, but the problem they're facing and talking about is endemic to any grading system you can think of. When a guy has two extremely good games it's absolutely going to warp things a lot, especially when he is suspended four games and most especially when he has only 160 snaps total to look at. That conversation totally made sense and any grading system would have the same concerns.

Wishful thinking till we tamp the dirt down. Agreed it's not monumental, but it's absolutely still very very big. This is far more than another division game. Far more. And like it or not, saying "when we win" is kidding yourself. It's "if we win." Put up a couple of wins against the Pats and then and only then will playing them be just another game.

Bwah ha ha ha ha. Oh, this is so precious. I feel like I did watching my little two year old fall into a mud puddle as she tried to walk for the first time.

Star has done his job consistently, and has proved to be a very good signing. He'll be here the whole length of his contract unless they manage to draft at least one excellent space eating 1-tech. And the defense will be "unexplainably" better. The reason the dead cap hit is large is that the Bills, in exchange for the $1.75 mill cut from his $50 mill salary, guaranteed a year and a half of his salary. They did this because they want him here.

Funny, I thought he looked great right from the start. Yeah, he was terrific right from carry one. A six yard run, a three yard catch, a 17 yard catch and another six yard run. It's not that he needs carries. He's probably just starting to figure things out.

Some people seem to think that anytime a guy gets blocked it means he's out of position. T'ain't so. As many have pointed out, the folks who know, like Cover One, and do extensive and intelligent films study say he's starting to get better and that he wasn't in the wrong places and time. It's typical, though. Finding a scapegoat and grabbing the pitchforks seems to be the signature move for a lot of fans on these boards.

If those are the worst plays he probably had a pretty good game. About five or six of those are really good examples of how the DL is letting him down. Two of them are hands plays. And nearly all of them are very early in the game. Not a single one in the second half except the tough dropped pass. To me when a guy as motivated as you clearly are to make him look bad can't do any better than this, it's hopeful.

Very very likely a jump in performance. It's what happens with nearly any team getting back multiple injured guys, unless other guys get injured in their places. Particularly as the injured guys are crucial and gathered together among certain position groups. The question will likely be how much of one. Big or small?

Please Ed is not responsible for destroying the Pats. That's up to the whole Bills team. Not certain about Ed yet? That's on you. What he needs to do is be healthy and play like a healthy Ed Oliver.

No. And not close. Knox, Levy and Saban are the best three. After that, there's a gigantic abyss. Some day McDermott may be considered up with those guys. Now, not in the same ballpark. And I'm sure he'd agree, both publicly and privately. And your stuff about Marv is nonsense. He was a terrific coach.

We needed help to win that game? Like the help the refs gave us when our receiver went up, caught the ball, came down with the ball and it was called an interception? Please. That call was far far worse and went against us. More, the P.I. call was in fact P.I. Yeah, most refs might not have called it under the circumstances, but it absolutely was P.I.as the guy rode our WR down the field 15 yards and did in fact prevent the completion by doing that. D is the weakness? I'm not really sure of that at this point. I thought it was very clear the first four games but the offense hasn't been especially good the past three weeks. It's probably still true, but not all that clear at this point.

They're both terrific, but the difference in effect between an elite QB and a good one is a lot larger than the difference between an elite coach and a good one. Neither one's as good without the other. But Belichick has a bigger handicap this year. The Pats roster is quite a bit worse than the Bucs.

Romo and Collinsworth are #1 and #2. Yes, agreed. I like him a lot too. And Spielman, as several noted above.

This'n. When the two of them are out there the defense suddenly functions much better. It'll be tough to re-sign Milano. They'll likely do their absolute best to accomplish it anyway.

Not really buying that at all. I mean, does Edmunds sometimes make those mistakes? Yeah, fair enough. But the staff has made it very clear that run fits are a problem and it's not just him. The wash he gets caught up in is often the extra player that Star used to occupy when the defense was operating the way that McDermott put it together. The whole D is having problems and that causes problems in how the D functions, including the situations Edmunds faces. I've used this example a million times here, but only because it's so on-target ... Ray Lewis was widely considered one of the two or so best LBs in the game for his first six or seven years in the league. Then his monster space eater, Siragusa, retired. And suddenly Ray was widely considered to be past it. He was (apparently) over the hill, a shadow of his former self and we heard many of the same things about him we're hearing now about Edmunds, that he couldn't get through traffic anymore that he wasn't getting off blocks ... on and on and on. Then they drafted Ngata as a 1-tech about three years later and lo and behold at the crazy coincidence, Ray Lewis was suddenly All-Pro again for the next seven or eight years. The state of the DL has a massive affect on how LBs look. McDermott's scheme is specifically dependent on this, which is why he brought in Star in the first place. If Zimmer starts performing well at 1-tech, and Edmunds gets healthy and Milano's back, I personally expect people to notice Edmunds taking an unexplainable leap forward.

Just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Kuechly was no fireplug or heavyweight at 6' 3" 238. Tremaine plays the same position. His build isn't a problem for McDermott. Last year he was already a Pro Bowler at MLB in a defense that performed superlatively. The position he's playing simply isn't the problem. The problem is his injury, the lack of Star and some other problems around him imparing the function of the D as a whole.