Thurman#1

So, nobody is reporting that the Raiders have feelers out or that any other teams have heard anything? Just that some guy thinks that it could happen and that they could get something for him, though not much? Well, OK, I guess "... But if they do decide to make a move, one potential player that could garner interest around the league is wide receiver Zay Jones. With rookies Henry Ruggs III and Bryan Edwards, healing with early-season injuries, Jones has performed adequately in their absence. But with Nelson Agholor and Hunter Renfrow also playing well, Jones’ playing time is likely to shrink after the bye week. That is why Gary Davenport of Bleacher Report suggested Jones as a possible trade target before the deadline. Given his size, speed and experience, there is likely a market for him at a relatively low price. Teams such as the Eagles, Jets and the Packers would all make sense for the former second-round pick. Here is a snippet of Davenport’s thoughts on Jones and why he could be traded over the next few weeks: Beasley is less a quality three than a quality slot. IMO Jones would be our fifth-best guy without listing return qualifications or jet sweeps. If you include returns, Roberts would be close. Throw in jet sweeps and maybe McKenzie would be close too. Zay wasn't awful. But he certainly underperformed his draft status. I really had hopes for him but he just doesn't seem like he'll ever be much more than he is now. You hope I guy will be good by his fourth year. Zay instead appears serviceable.

I love it, "Lorax is an internet dude now," like this makes you and him equally knowledgeable. Two in a row in terms of giving perfect, textbook examples of what I described. The old "you're so naive, everybody knows he's lying except you, since we know he's lying because he disagreed with me" ploy. And it's flagrant, ridiculous nonsense. I'll tell you want everybody at this point knows - with the apparent exception of you - and that is that if your irons in the fire stop you from criticizing someone there are a million ways to act that are smarter and better in both the short and the long-term than to lie. Assuming that because he has an iron in the fire (questionable but possible) that he's lying is utter nonsense. Guys who are obvious team shills lose credibility, and fast. Their opinions are rapidly less sought after because they're predictable. And again, there are a million ways to avoid lying and keep your credibility. First, you can just not comment. Simplest thing in the world. But the easiest and most common thing to do if you must comment is to pick one of the infinite number of ways to play Crash Davis. "Tremaine Edmunds is a smart young man. I want him on my side in an alley fight anytime." Or "This guy gives 110% out there game in and game out." Or "The Bills should be proud to have such a fine representative on the field living up to the fine tradition of the blue, white and red." There's a million of them. Probably a billion. You don't have to say anything specific. When instead a guy makes a specific relevant comment - as Lorax does here - it should be believed. There are so many ways to avoid doing it that when they choose that direction, it means something. And when you refuse to believe him, what's spectacularly clear is that the guy not to be believed is the one out there doubting the experts. You're right about one thing. It's not even a point of discussion. When healthy, Edmunds has produced very well indeed. Again, you're correct that "extraordinary" would be an overstatement, but he's been a very solid producer, one of the three or so best players on a defense that was terrific the past two years.

Yup. The haters (it's a word I find kinda stupid, but Edmunds really does seem to have them) want to say that he should be ready. Fact is plenty of guys have made huge leaps during and after their third years. Lawrence Taylor sure wasn't Lawrence Taylor his first three years. He was very good (so is Edmunds when healthy), but he still had major improvements to make. Derrick Brooks was tackling people but still hadn't fully figured out pass defense till his late third and early fourth years. James Harrison, certainly, and there are plenty more. And before the nonsense starts, I'm not comparing Edmunds to them except in one way. They (and many others) prove that it's perfectly possible, in fact pretty common, for LBs to make major leaps later in their careers than Edmunds has yet reached.

100% agreed. It must have seemed like Bizarro World to the defense. "We've defensed three drives. We've allowed a total of 62 yards on those three drives, and we're down 14-7. Something's not right." I think that's fair enough. Edmunds is not extraordinary yet. So far just very very good when healthy. The problem appears to be that even hurt he's better than his healthy backup. That's why he's playing.

All things considered, yeah. If we had more cap money and Bortles had had the same time to prepare and learn the offense, I'd go Bottles. But we don't, and while he's NOT a starter in this league, Bottles is a pretty solid backup and will make a bit, IMO. Barkley's not bad, though.

Yeah, I'm hoping Feliciano makes a real difference. Their pass blocking has been pretty good. But the run blocking less so, to these eyes anyway. You may be right, but the media that were able to watch practices we couldn't see and they seem mostly to expect Feliciano to take over from Winters at RG. We'll see.

Well, you were half right. Thinking a video can show something about which there's not a single frame on the film .... the Bills D ... is a classic case of thinking from what you already believe rather than what the evidence shows. Perfect example of confirmation bias. The video did show a lot about the Bills offense, though. More confirmation bias. "I've been harping on it." So it's proven. No, the defense has been consistently excellent through McDermott's term. They've been thrashed a game or two each season? Hey, fair enough. But that's what happens. Go back and look at the '85 Bears. They allowed and 38 points to the Dolphins and 28 points to the 2-14 Bucs. Every team and unit has a bad game or two. It's just a function of variability. The rest of your post makes total sense, though. You're right that the current state of affairs is concerning. But so far, that's all it is.

There's not much out there. And if there were we have virtually no cap space to pay them. Don't expect big moves. A small one or two maybe.

Wait, a 4-1 team is pretty good? Hmm, I'll have to think about this. EDIT: OK, I thought about it. It's true. But we lost, so large amounts of the fanbase lose their minds and run around overreacting like chickens with heads cut off. The way of the world.

I think it's right that some changed. People often go by preconceptions. But it shouldn't have changed. Whenever that happened the response should have been the same ... "He should've caught it, but the throw was off. Both of them have a part of the responsibility."

I agree, with one correction. It wasn't crap field position three times. It was FOUR times. 1Q 13:29 - TEN drive start at BUF 16 (INT) 1Q 1:59 - TEN drive start at BUF 30 (PR) 3Q 3:05 - TEN drive start at BUF 12 (INT) 4Q 3:49 - TEN drive start at BUF 18 (Fum on KO) 28 points.

I love it when some internet dude explains how when an expert says something, because it disagrees with what the dude thinks, the expert must be saying the opposite of what he really means. And it always ends up with the dude summing up by saying, roughly, "See? He's saying 'Yes,' which clearly means 'no,' and when you look at it in this way, the expert's total disagreement with me clearly shows how right I am." It always says more about the internet dude than it does about the expert. Yeah, when you don't produce, fans will wonder. But for two years, Edmunds absolutely has produced. He's played MLB very well on a near-elite defense. He's played very very capably indeed. Yeah he's had problems with the shoulder injury, no question. And if that continues on and on, questions should be asked. But there's no particular reason to think it will in fact continue. God, the takes get awful here after bad games. All the "I know way better than McDermott" folks come out.

That's not how most players think. If they can play and it won't hurt them permanently they want to play. And in this case the coaches think that even a hurt Edmunds is better than his replacement, healthy. They're not concerned with helping fans judge things. And I don't think they're, even to the slightest degree, concerned with him being a potential bust. He was very good last year. No reason to think that he won't be that good or better when healthy, though as always other things affect outcomes in extremely complex systems like these. I don't know how many of you remember Ray Lewis' mid-career slump. He was pretty much the best in the league for seven or eight years, then suddenly he appeared pretty average for two or three years, then he was terrific again for pretty much the rest of his career. And it was so weird and coincidental that when big Tony Siragusa was in front of him, he was sensational, when Siragusa retired he was average and when they drafted Ngata he was instantly terrific again. Even good LBs have a terrible time filling holes that contain OLs coming straight at them.

Fair enough, really. Losing Star really hurt. They're doing a better job replacing him than they had been earlier in the season, but yeah, they had to sell out to stop the run this week, and it loosened us up considerably against the pass. But we will get Star back next year.That should help a lot. Wouldn't mind seeing them pick another big 'ol space eater to eventually replace Star and work his way in the platoons. IMO part of it is also that Harrison Phillips still isn't quite playing as well as he did before his injury. My guess is that we'll see him improve with time. Hope I'm right about that. The 1-tech is a major component of McDermott's scheme and right now the ones we have aren't keeping the LBs as clean as they were being kept the past couple of years. Interesting. Thanks.

"So if he was struggling would they give up 60 points?" you say? Congratulations, that may be the worst argument we've seen on here all year. Great point that if we imagine something being wrong that's not wrong that it might in that imaginary world make things worse. Irrelevant and off topic, but hey, who's perfect? And "the eyes" that tell us Edmunds is out of position ... are your eyes. And frankly, Lorenzo Alexander's eyes telling him something completely different pretty much means you're wrong here. When we have a choice between Lorenzo's eyes on Bills LB play, and yours, you're pretty much going to be wrong. Me too if I pretend I know more than Lorenzo does. But I don't.

That teams that platoon DLs, so they need eight real players, and have only used one 1st round pick and zero 2nds on DL, so they will need a lot of mid-priced FAs, will tend to have expensive DLs.

More of a top 10ish team than a top 2 team last year? Mmmm. Yeah, maybe 5th, 6th or 7th would be a pretty reasonable argument to make. Still very good though. And I greatly disagree about what you're saying is our ceiling. When we get our top two CBs and our top two LBs back and in shape such that they're not playing well below capacity due to injuries, this could still be a very good defense, particularly if you're looking at ceiling. Two of our top three players didn't play, and the third doesn't appear able to use his right arm much though he's in playing because he's better with one arm that his healthy replacement. And again, the opponents started three drives inside our 20 and one more on the 30 yard line. That's a massive handicap.

How many other teams are on the same kind of pace in this season when the NFL is scoring far more points and churning out far more yards than ever before? And how much more likely is that to happen when your team is scoring a ton of points and other teams fall behind?

That's number two overall. Defenses are ranked by total yards allowed, and for good reason. The defense's responsibility for total yards is around 95%. A few defenses have to defend against fewer or more drives, so that's a factor, but Whereas points allowed measures the rest of the team a great deal more. Individual drives are massively affected by drive start. That doesn't matter in terms of yards because overall average drive start is greatly similar for every team over the course of the season. But expected scoring isn't affected nearly as much by average start. Probably something on the order of 30% of the responsibility for scoring allowed rests on the offense and STs. Yards has a major effect on field position (duh), for both the offense and defense. Every drive is important, not just scoring drives. Average yards per drive is an even better look at defensive performance. This is true. He could be caught standing over a dead body holding a bloody knife and screaming, "I told you I'd kill you, and you didn't believe me. What do you think now that I stabbed you over and over again until you died?"

Blowouts are not the responsibility of the defense. Blowouts only happen when the offense doesn't score, so the offense has a great deal of the responsibility. The whole team is responsible for a blowout, and this one was even much more so than usual. The Titans had three drive starts inside the Bills 20. THREE!!! And another on the 30. The defense wasn't good. But to put all the blame on them for the blowout ... shows only that you're missing the point.

LInk? At this early stage, it's deniable. He's been playing superbly for five games, but Tyrod was terrific for five games too. Some guys regress. Some guys lose it. Sometimes teams figure guys out. It happens. On the other hand, sometimes guys become superstars. Certainly his arm talent is superstar-level. That's been clear since college. There's a lot more to the game than that though. Far too early to think we know the final verdict. It does seem to be leaning that way, though.

Yeah, he put it clearly, really made me get it more deeply than I have before.

Doh!!! Thanks for the correction, I'll go back and change the original post.

Hmm, maybe I need to go back and edit in quotation marks. I didn't do any analysis, really. Just typing. But thanks. It took me quite a while to type it all up.

Re: Tannehill's very good play: "He never leaves yards on the field, that's my thing about him, he maximizes opportunities to the maximum (sic) almost every week. And that's where he's really impressive. And last night, with that game, the stats and numbers aren't going to look like they're amazing, but as you break down the game, first off they were very fortunate to get the short field a few times. That set them up for some scoring. ... But they were going to have to throw the ball to score some touchdowns and do that. Because Buffalo was selling out to stop the run." ----------------------------- (6:20) "What you don't really realize is the Bills defense really played a little bit better than I wanted to give them credit for when I turned off the TV last night. And then when I watched the film today, I go, 'There were some things that I really liked about what they did.' " "They were put in some tough spots. They really were, by their offense and the punt return and all those type of things, but what I did like best is that they were not ... running game has been a little bit of an issue for them. They were not gashed in the running game. Now, did it compromise them in the pass game? Definitely. And am I still worried about that with Buffalo? Yes. "I mean Buffalo kind of has kind of corner dysfunction." Paul Burmeister: "Especially without White." "Right. And he's not there, it's a pretty average group, to where I worry about them. So we always talk about when a team does something elite, so it forces other teams into having to do something. And it forced Buffalo to have to put Josh Norman and Taron Johnson and those guys on islands against AJ Brown, and they're just not going to win those matchups." ------------------------- (12:10) "The Titans defensive game plan was awesome, it really was. I can't say enough about it. They played coverage the whole night. They ran exotic zone coverages. Mike Vrabel obviously had a little bead on the offense. Again, this is a New England offense. Mike Vrabel's done pretty damn good against New England so far, he's 2-0 since he's been the coach of the Tennessee Titans. And stymied their offense both times. He stymied Buffalo's offense a little last year when Buffalo went down there and won a close game. "And this is not how the Titans have been playing the first few games of the year. They've been playing a little more in-your-face, man-to-man, we're going to cover you and make you earn it. But I think he realized, "Woh, we're not going to match up with this group. We can't cover this group all over the field, with what they're doing. And not with this big sucker, 17, back there. 'Cause even if we do cover them, he buys time and people pop open and all of that. "So very impressive from that standpoint with dropping people into coverage and the illusion of blitzing." Paul Burmeister: "Which leads to that confusion that you want the quarterback to have for half a second." "Half a second! ... Teams are over-blitzing. ... I'm gonna show you teams that blitz and they get gashed and then teams that play coverage right now are proving to be the better defenses. They are." ---------------------- "Really a very interesting look inside. Around 18:00 he talks about how the fake snap counts aren't just to try to draw guys Offside, but also to get the D to show who's blitzing, so the QB can then get them in the perfect play. He said that Vrabel appeared to have coached his guys that he'd rather see them start half a second late than to flinch early and give the whole defensive plan away. "They look like it's Cover Two and they don't flinch from Cover Two. Until "set hut," and the ball is snapped. And all of a sudden then it becomes Cover Three, or it becomes man-to-man with a robber in the middle, or whatever else. That is the ***** that confuses a quarterback for a split second. "Or then the other thing we were talking about like, creative blitzes where it still ends up only being a four-man rush, where here's a nickel cover corner, where usually the nickel cover corner is told, "You're blitzing here, right?" They can't help it usually. So teh quarterback does the dummy snap count or even gets toward the end of the snap count and [the blitzer] is flinching because they can't wait to blitz. And Vrabel has told them, "Hey, you showing it and just being a split second faster is really ruining it. Don't do that. "We want to surprise them so they're not schematically capable of doing it. And they're great at telling their corners and their blitzers, "Don't even flinch. Just look at your guy, and when the ball is snapped, I don't care if you get off the ball like a split second later than the guy who's told the whole world he's coming. We want to get there because they're not schematically ready for it." "And that's how they got a lot of free runners last night on Josh Allen." --------------------------- They do a great little breakdown on what happened with the second INT also. Around 21:33. Says Butler duped him, faking a move up to cover Beasley on his break but then backs up. Says he thought Allen didn't read the body language the right way because he didn't put mustard on the throw, he thought that guy wasn't going to be there. Also went nuts about the second TD to Yeldon and what an insane throw that was for Allen And said the Titans weren't respecting Singletary, "Please, run it." Great stuff.