Thurman#1

IMO he'd turn down some of the crappier ones without a second thought. But if it's a good fit I agree, they won't be able to keep him with money and an assistant head coach title. He's in the driver's seat right now. He's no beggar, and he can be a chooser.

They're already included. With all those opt outs back, the Pats will have $69 M.

He looked very good from minute one. I don't see us being able to keep him ... with one possible exception. He's in the driver's seat now. Another year or two with Josh wouldn't seem likely to hurt him in any way. So he can be very choosy with situations. It's possible he might not find one to his liking this year. Probably not likely, as he's likely to have his choice of two or three spots, but certainly possible, and the odds would climb the longer we stay in the playoffs. Many teams would rather have their guy in place early.

No. Poor analogy. The time of your midterms is something the student has zero control over. Whether you are ahead and for how much of the game, is something your team has a great deal of control over. It relates directly to how well you're playing, not perfectly, but directly. It's an interesting stat. Shows that we tend to start early, for one thing. And that's a very good thing. EDIT: Oh, if I misunderstood and you were referring to the fact that he was only looking at after the Jets game, looking at things recently makes total sense. How we have played recently is a far better barometer of how good this team is right now, going into the playoffs than how well we played very early in the year was. They're playing much better, and that stretch of time was no cakewalk, with games against the Patriots, Seahawks, Cardinals, Chargers, 9ers and Steelers. People complain about using partial stats or leaving some out. But it's fine to do that ... as long as you don't pretend you're getting a complete picture. As long as you own up to the fact that you're only getting a partial look, that's fine. So if you say, "I'm leaving out this guy's worst two games, and you can see that he's actually playing very well this year," that's not reasonable. But saying the Bills have been terrific since the Jets game, very reasonable.

Nah. But thanks for all the evidence.

Yes, he was one of many good receivers from that draft, or anyway he looked like a good one for a few years. They were very high on Beckham Jr and if they hadn't traded up we'd likely have ended up with him or Ebron.

Sweet. It was sweet at the time and again reading the article.

Yes. But he was still raw, without question. And that isn't some new assertion, it's been the consensus, and the correct one, since before the draft process. Raw has a lot of components. It can't be reduced to just games played. Josh was raw as a saddle sore. But he developed.

Rare guys fail too. I haven't followed the argument here, I'm purely reacting to your post here. And yeah, his profile isn't common. But Wentz and Kaepernick are much the same kinds of rare, in terms of coming out of small programs and being hard workers. At that level, everyone's rare. While there are certainly types, these guys are all individual, all quite different and rare. I thought well before the Bills drafted him that he would have a shot, and that he was worth a top ten pick. I even thought the Bills might (not "would," I'm not that smart) take him because of the Newton comparisons and how they'd brought Cam along in Carolina. I didn't judge him by stats. But pretty much everyone out there runs a very real risk of failure. Maybe a tiny fraction of guys seem like sure things, the Andrew Lucks and Peyton Mannings, but just about nobody else. Things can go wrong. Or right. It's not as predictable as people like to think. And IMO an extremely large part of it is putting the guy in a good environment. What good drafters (and Beane certainly does appear to be a good drafter) do is maximize the chances they get the right guy and then support the hell out of him. But none of that is any guarantee. The single thing you can't know is how well a guy can adapt to processing huge amounts of information, and making extremely good decisions in extremely short periods of time. College guys see greatly simplified situations, offenses and defenses and slower athletes. There's no way to know how the decision-making will go. Some guys with terrific leadership, commitment and work habits never develop that extremely rare ability.

Come on. Nobody thinks he had "the perfect environment." Not even now. What they gave him was an environment where he was supposed to sit the first year while they were deep in the trough of that rebuild, and after that gave him consistent year-by-year improvement in the players around him. An environment that now has become excellent. Beane has admitted that they screwed up the QB situation that first year, saying that when they got rid of McCarron they should have brought in Anderson immediately at that point.

IMO ... pure opinion and I recognize that ... Edwards and Losman might have made it under better conditions, Edwards maybe in particular. If someone disagrees, I would totally respect that.

Oh, my. Nice. I'm happy with our tackles, but Peters was such an exceptional player, and next year we may lose Daryl Williams.

Ted Washington or Pat Williams. Fred Smerlas, maybe. Our LBs would feast. We'll get back Lotulelei next year, and our inside guys are playing better, but they'd be my pick for this year. At CB, maybe Antoine Winfield. Loved the way he played.

Awesome!!!

Interesting, Bill. Agreed that it will be fascinating to see how they appropriate resources as things get tighter. He might stress receiver more, thinking that Allen is more of a pure passer than Cam ever was. Maybe. Hard to say, though. I hadn't remembered that Whaley had set out his values so clearly.

Edmunds No, I do know that Edmunds was the 1st alternate, as does anyone willing to spend about a thousandth of a calorie typing the search into google. Just 'cause your ass is apparently too lazy to do so doesn't mean everyone is. "Edmunds was a first alternate in his second NFL season." https://www.buffalobills.com/news/tremaine-edmunds-named-to-first-pro-bowl "According toa league source, nine Bills were named as altrenates to the Pro Bowl. Tremaine Edmunds and Andre Roberts are first alternates, Mitch Morse is a second alternate, Josh Allen is a third alternate, ..." https://www.wkbw.com/sports/buffalo-bills/bills-cb-tredavious-white-selected-to-his-first-pro-bowl In case the technology is too much for you, you go to google.com and you type into the box, "Tre Edmunds pro bowl first alternate." I personally got 980K results from that search. Your results should be similar. Darius Leonard was the starter, Dont'a Hightower was the reserve, and Tremaine Edmunds was the first alternate. Tyrod As for Tyrod, his Pro Bowl was the all-time classic in terms of players fleeing in droves. "The game was already a sham, but the diaspora at certain glamour positions make it even more so now. Five of the six quarterbacks originally picked are out, as are five of the six initial picks at outside linebacker. All three free safeties have been replaced as well, along with three cornerbacks and three wide receivers. "So have fun with that, and enjoy this list (which we’ll update with the inevitable future replacements): "2016 Pro Bowlers "QUARTERBACKS (6) "Tom Brady, New England (replaced by Jameis Winston, Tampa Bay) "Cam Newton, Carolina (replaced by Tyrod Taylor, Buffalo) "Carson Palmer, Arizona (replaced by Teddy Bridgewater, Minnesota) "Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay (replaced by Derek Carr, Oakland) "Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh (replaced by Eli Manning, New York Giants) "Russell Wilson, Seattle" https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/01/26/welcome-to-the-largely-replacement-pro-bowl/ Again, the title of that article is "Welcome to the (largely replacement) Pro Bowl." Here's another one to fill out the picture that year: "That has forced the league to push far down its list of alternates to fill some positions. Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston, named Monday as a replacement, was the eighth player at his position to be either invited or announced in addition to the six quarterbacks voted in. The Cincinnati Bengals' Adam Jones, named Tuesday, was the seventh alternate at cornerback. "The quarterback position has been especially hard hit. The Seattle Seahawks' Russell Wilson is the only player voted in who remains on the roster. Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton is playing in Super Bowl 50, but the New England Patriots' Tom Brady, the Green Bay Packers' Aaron Rodgers, the Pittsburgh Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger and the Arizona Cardinals' Carson Palmer have all backed out. "Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton, the first alternate, couldn't play because of a thumb injury that caused him to miss the playoffs. The San Diego Chargers' Philip Rivers declined an alternate invitation and the New Orleans Saints' Drew Brees is presumed to have done the same." That left this collection of quarterbacks for the game: Wilson, the Oakland Raiders' Derek Carr, the New York Giants' Eli Manning, the Buffalo Bills' Tyrod Taylor, the Minnesota Vikings' Teddy Bridgewater and Winston." https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/197015/2016-nfl-pro-bowl-most-declined-invitation-in-history Again, the QBs in that game were Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston, Teddy Bridgewater, Derek Carr, Eli Manning and Tyrod.

A while, I'd say. I love the fact that they have to address this. "The only thing we've earned at this point is all that noise," he said. "And we've got to block that out, honestly." - McDermott https://www.buffalobills.com/news/the-only-thing-we-ve-earned-is-the-noise-bills-coaches-discuss-handling-rising-e "There's a lot more football left and we're chasing bigger goals as far as getting back, getting to work and getting everybody's back. He said, 'dogs on three.' It really shows you the mindset that these guys have and everybody around. We're starving for more. We want more. We expect more from ourselves." - Stefon Diggs. https://www.buffalobills.com/news/the-only-thing-we-ve-earned-is-the-noise-bills-coaches-discuss-handling-rising-e "We haven't done anything yet. We still got to win the East. Still in 3rd place, so not much has really changed for us, so ... all our goals still haven't been met." - Jon Feliciano https://www.buffalobills.com/video/jon-feliciano-expectation-hasn-t-changed-for-us "Promise me you'll stay humble." - McDermott in his post-game speech https://www.buffalobills.com/news/the-only-thing-we-ve-earned-is-the-noise-bills-coaches-discuss-handling-rising-e These are a function of having won such a big game and seeing the national opinion of the team drastically improve. Love to see that they didn't wait for a let-down to maybe happen, they're addressing the fact being a national pick now as a contender doesn't mean they can let their foot off the pedal. They haven't gotten this much love and respect nationally in a while, and it can throw off the mindset. They are on top of that. Not a huge deal at all, but I love to see it.

Or college elsewhere. 39 catches total. They just didn't throw to the TE much there.

Eight games is hardly "hardly played." 424 snaps. That's more than half the snaps we've gotten from Diggs, our WR snaps leader. IMO you're underestimating how easy it will be to replace him. Davis is good but he doesn't threaten deep nearly as much as Brown does. But yeah, we're going to have to make some painful moves. Or not be able to do some moves we'd like. Or both.

$50 M is very very optimistic, and would leave us with holes to fill to replace Smith and Butler. IMO if they get an extra $20M to work with, they won't be kicking all that many cans down the road as you're suggesting. We'll see, I guess. If they did get that much, I'd pretty much agree with your moves, though I think Milano would be prioritized higher. I keep hearing variations on this from a Daniel Kaplan article on The Athletic, "The league and NFL Players Association agreed in August, given the pandemic-driven plunge in local revenues, to a minimum 2021 cap of $175 million. Sources have said, barring the unexpected, that is likely to be the 2021 figure. The cap is based in part on the previous year’s local revenues, which this season have been practically nonexistent, causing at the very least a $4 billion reduction in league proceeds. Without the minimum floor, the cap certainly would have fallen far more." https://theathletic.com/2242868/2020/12/07/nfl-reduced-salary-cap-2021/ Sometimes the unexpected happens, but for obvious reasons expecting the unexpected isn't generally the path to follow. They're already essentially underwriting a large portion of that $175M with revenues from future years. If they do raise it a bit, that would help us out, no question.

Fair enough, mon. We all make them, me more than most.

You might consider maybe reading what I'm saying more carefully.

In any case, spending much money on higher-priced FAs this offseason simply isn't likely, not with our cap the way it is. Expect them to prioritize their own FAs as they have consistently said they would, and bring in some lower-priced guys to fill holes with the money they have left. Not to mention that Kim Pegula is active and concerned on women's issues. And that she's shown this does impact her decision-making.

Doesn't matter. If she did, he should have walked away. There's always a reason. Never a good one, though, short of self-defense and there's certainly no evidence Kareem Hunt was in any danger from this woman. EDIT: I see now that Hapless already said all this far better than I managed.

IMO you're slightly overthinking this. Process isn't something the Bills or the Sixers invented. It's a common term in leadership studies, in religion, in self-improvement, in business, as well as sports and it has been for decades. It's generally used to point out that people need to focus on the process of getting better rather than the rewards that come when you improve, because the rewards will come intermittently and inconsistently whereas the process will be there every day. Focusing on the process makes your training reliable, it focuses you correctly and focuses you on the things that will make better more consistently and dependably. If you're a salesman you shouldn't focus on how many sales you make because to a large extent that's luck-dependent. Instead you focus on making a large number of calls, on improving your tactics for finding better customers, on making better pitches, on becoming more trustworthy, on improving your customer service, on re-contacting old customers, on getting more referrals. You don't focus on outcome. You focus on the improvement process itself. In sports this goes back to John Wooden and even further. You don't focus on the Super Bowl or even on winning one game. Some days you will meet better opposition and the ball won't bounce your way. You focus on maxizing improvement. One of the byproducts will be winning more but that's not where your focus goes. I do love the values and the culture McDermott and Beane have brought here.