Thurman#1

Yeah, fascinating stuff. I loved how he was able to find fairly quickly their weaknesses in chess and then that they had the same weaknesses in football, so when he worked on that mindset/tactical weakness in chess, it carried over. Amazing stuff, IMO. I tried speed chess for like two games and I was awful. I now wonder whether I should start working on it. While he does need to work on the inconsistency problems he has with accuracy, that is absolutely not all that he needs to get done. I'm sure if you talk to him, to his coaches both on the Bills and private, they would all tell you he needs to work on a ton of things. They all do, really, but it's certainly true of Josh as well.

But it's NOT just sharpening the mind and fostering anticipatory thought. It goes deep into mindset. But hey, you don't want to read it, that's up to you. I found it fascinating but everyone's different.

https://www.sethmakowsky.com/2020/05/20/this-giants-rookie-is-mastering-chess-and-he-could-be-just-the-piece-the-team-needs-right-now/ Here's another quick excerpt from another (Bills-related) article on this: "Darnay Holmes in a meeting room at UCLA, balancing on one foot, a dumbbell in one hand. " 'Pawn to E4.' Seth Makowsky makes his move. "Holmes has to think fast, and stay standing upright. " 'Knight to F3' "At their training session that day, in the middle of a game-week, Makowsky and Holmes, now a Giants quarterback, are playing a round of speed chess, with distractions. The aim: Get Holmes to make smart, quick, efficient decisions. If it works, it should translate onto the football field, too. Holmes said it does." To me, that's hilarious and fascinating. Speed chess while standing on one foot and holding a dumbbell in one hand. EDIT: Oh, holy crap! As I read further, I found that Darnay Homes is Darick Holmes' kid. Check this: "When Holmes was 10, he walked into a hospital room where Darick Holmes, his father, was bedridden, shot seven times during a drug deal gone wrong. His father survived, and then Holmes thrived." I had no idea about this. And dang, Darnay graduated UCLA in 2 1/2 years. Jeez, I'm now officially rooting for him. A bunch of stuff about Darick in the article.

https://www.sethmakowsky.com/2020/06/29/seth-makowsky-takes-quarterbacks-thinking-from-checkers-to-chess/ Right up my alley. Fascinating stuff. It's about a guy named Seth Makowsky, who's a CEO and a chess fan, though he doesn't pretend to be a master, who has in the past three years or so started training a bunch of QBs in chess. Particularly speed chess. And he has a ton of football guys who say it translates directly between the two. His most famous client is Deshaun Watson. Bucky Brooks is now a fan and says that since he's met and talked with Makowsky he's always on his phone on a chess app. More, it's not just for QBs, guys at all position groups seem to be helped. Here's an excerpt, about maybe 10% of the article (it's long and in-depth). "One of the quarterbacks on Brooks’ 7-on-7 team at The Opening was an unheralded, uncommitted prospect named C.J. Stroud. A Southern California native, Stroud sought out Makowsky after the QBs were introduced to the chess coach even after some of his peers sounded skeptical and teased him about asking him so many questions. “''Will you train me after this?' Stroud asked. Stroud met with Makowsky from 10 p.m. to midnight for a couple of nights. They trained on having a plan and a process, working through how all of the pieces and players work together in a complex environment, and seeing the entire board. “'It was kind of a mind-blowing experience for a lot of these kids,' Brooks said. For C.J., it allowed him to come to the line and have a check off process. It gave him a way to organize his thoughts in the moment, without making it bigger than it is. And when it clicked, he was all in. He ignored all the white noise of the other kids laughing. "You could just see that it unlocked him. "Brooks’ team won the tournament’s championship by playing one defense the entire time — something he took from Makowsky. “'Literally, that thought process transformed everything,' Brooks said. 'I told the players, don’t overthink it. Just execute. Just keep it simple. Always be on the attack.' "Stroud completed around 80 percent of his passes for the event and won MVP honors. His recruiting stock skyrocketed. He later signed with Ohio State. Even though a chess board is displayed prominently outside UCLA coach Chip Kelly’s office, Makowsky said the team’s bond with chess happened organically, with players eagerly gravitating toward and embracing the game. And many Bruins players gush about Makowsky’s impact on their development. Quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson spent two and a half hours with Makowsky on this first day at UCLA. Makowsky’s warp-speed games with Thompson-Robinson can get so intense, the young QB works up a sweat. “'For me, five seconds is like forever, which is why I train these guys in that way,' Makowsky says. 'I train the brain like a muscle. Some guys want to have all the time to think about something. So when I put them in that situation, they’re sweating. It’s intense for them. They can’t overanalyze things too long. So I’m getting them be able to process quickly. Just doing the two-minute chess, it starts re-wiring them to know you’ve got to be okay with uncertainty. Understand that you’ve got to be able to move quickly, and if something goes wrong with fast, recover, recover, recover. And I’ve built that muscle up to the point where they start rewiring how they process.' "Makowsky would typically come to the Bruins facility Tuesday mornings and he might be there until 8 at night depending on which players sought him out. Former UCLA cornerback Darnay Holmes took a big interest. "A perfectionist, Holmes used to punish himself if he made a mistake. It might have been a technical mistake that only he knew he made, but he and Makowsky made a point of not emotionally letting it impact the next play. Their focus was getting him to always make forceful moves. That carryover onto the field meant Holmes playing more aggressively and being more comfortable pressing the receiver more. Holmes’ improvement was reflective in a strong showing at the 2020 Senior Bowl, and he was drafted in the fourth round by the Giants in April. Jim Nagy, the executive director of the Senior Bowl, said he saw a 'huge difference' and improvement in Holmes’ play in Mobile compared to his performance in his final season at UCLA." I only wish he'd write a book about it. I checked; he hasn't.

You're really overstating this. It's very much NOT that nobody wants Clowney. It's that under the current conditions, at what is currently being asked, nobody is willing to pull the trigger. For the Bills he'd cost money they'd have better use for in re-signing guys like White, Milano and Dawkins. "We detailed last week the slow-moving nature of the market for veteran players—just three have signed extensions with their teams (Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey, Texans OT Laremy Tunsil, Patriots S Patrick Chung). That has to do with the uncertainty of the cap going forward, and it has to do with teams being unwilling to spend the cash, too, with a revenue shortfall now a near-certainty. " - Albert Breer https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/06/29/cam-newton-new-england-patriots-team-doctors-covid

He is indeed. It's exactly because they're going to platoon that he's unlikely to see enough carries. You look at last year's AFC Pro Bowlers, none had 151 carries as Singletary did. None also had Singletary's YPC. There's also a style question. Guys who aren't power backs don't generally get picked unless they get a ton of carries. As you say, though, Singletary is very good.

With their $8 mill in cap now that they got the extra $6 mill, he's going to bring in Dareus? Nah. Here's what Lombardi actually said, at 8:50: "B. [Belichick wants defensive tackles because unlike the Raiders, who have no idea how to stop Patrick Mahomes in terms of building a football team, Belichick knows the only way to get to Patrick Mahomes is to go through the middle. So he would be more inclined to say 'I'll sign Marcell Dareus to a contract than he would be to sign Clowney because Marcell Dareus can push the pocket. Marcell Dareus can create getting to the paint. Clowney's going to run past the QB. Clowney's not going to set the edge on run plays. Plus Clowney's not going to practice on Wednesday. Clowney's not going to practice on Thursday." So he's not suggesting that they will get Dareus. Just that Clowney is not the kind of guy that would fit their system, and that Dareus would fit the system better. It's not a serious suggestion, and he doesn't mention Dareus' personality or salary or anything else. Just that Dareus would fit the defensive system of what Belichick would want better than Clowney. The interesting thing was Lombardi saying that he wanted to grab Peters off the Bills practice squad when he was in the FO at Oakland and Al Davis turned him down. Lombardi says he already had a deal done with Jason Peters' agent and Al Davis turned down the idea..

I don't see a big splash, not with having to re-sign Milano, Dawkins, etc. I could see the Njoku move, though I'm not sure a 5th gets him. A 3rd, yeah, maybe. He was pretty productive last year. More likely is another smaller move or two including maybe trading away a couple of bubble guys for late draft picks. Not to mention moves compensating for future injuries.

You keep saying it, and each time you do, it does not become one iota more true. He's not average, not as a tackle and not as a left tackle. He's above average. He's not elite, but he's significantly above average. The article, which you said you agree with, puts him somewhere between the ninth and twelfth-best LT. And yeah, that's about right. Which is again, not average. And when you have a left tackle who is significantly above average, you want to do your best to keep him, because like it or not those guys are absolutely NOT easily replaceable. To have a good chance of replacing a guy like Dawkins you either have to use a high draft pick or pay a very high salary. That's just he way it is. Agreed that you can't pay everyone and that choices will need to be made.

Not at all. Lawson has improved each year. Particularly the last couple of years. They likely just figured they could replace him cheaper.

. Heh heh heh. Nice one. I like this a lot.

Wow. Maybe Trump really was a Bills fan after all. Next thing you know Bon Jovi will slip and do a Cookie Gilchrist reference.

How 'bout instead when they don't come for our Bills we forget completely that anyone said anything. It's true there's too much political correctness. But these things don't happen unless there are a lot of people behind the idea. There simply aren't here.

Filly busters. Actually, I like the one suggested by ... agh, I forget his screen name now ... ah, yeah, Warcodered, the Swamp Gators.

That's not the way it works. If a guy is 15th best, out of 64, he's going to get paid probably somewhere in the general range of 3rd to 8th. That's the way it works with the rising cap. It might be a bit different if the cap dips due to the coronavirus. But that's what guys get when they sign a new contract, they're above a bunch of guys who are as good or better but signed a few years back. It's how it works, and Dawkins should be signed if at all possible. The $15 mill or so a year someone suggested is in the right ballpark. You do NOT want to create a vacancy at LT unless forced to in some way. If Dawkins refused to sign for less than $20, then yeah, you get one somewhere else. But they're likely to find agreement in that general range suggested above, and he isn't league average, he's significantly above it. The article has him in the top 11 to 14 of all tackles, left and right, and that's also in the right ballpark though most of the guys above him on that list are LTs.

It's just the working of the market. It doesn't feel like it, but it's still early and if a team with a realistic shot at doing postseason damage sees an injury to a pass rusher, he may get what he's now asking for. Or he may have to drop a few mill and take a one-year deal. Either way he'll be just fine Yeah, the medical thing is a big deal.

I'm sure they're keeping this option open, as a stick in the negotiations. But if you pick a UDFA you might well run him for 800 yards, if you give him enough carries. But you're not gonna get 5.6 YPC out of him the way you did with Mostert. Tevin Coleman managed 4.1 YPC last year behind the same OL.

I don't blame him, myself. You're right that he's doing better than he could be. But the guy is 28 years old. By the time this contract runs out, his next contract will start at age 30, and he is unlikely to get much in a contract at that age. If he was younger you could say, "hey, just wait, the money will come," but in his case if he doesn't make it now, he may well never make big money.

The "team players" who want to leave their team when not offered enough money ... that's every NFL player. I suppose there are a few exceptions, particularly guys going on to third contracts who've already made a ton and a half. Everyone else, though, they all want money, which is only reasonable.

You do. Having cap space, when you've got a GM who knows what he's doing, can turn into wins. Having no cap space can turn into the GM having to give away guys he'd rather keep, which can then mean losses. It's certainly not an exact correlation but having cap space is absolutely a positive for a GM, giving him freedom. Ah, that's why the figures were off. The Eagles are closer to $60 mill over next year now.

$30 mill in roster bonuses and option bonuses. If they turn those into signing bonuses they could cut a lot depending how long the various contracts are or will be. But that'd just be kicking the can down the road. Still might be part of the plan, though.

Second time I saw this from you. Loved it both times. I really think that's a winner. People don't realize that D.C. is literally built on a swamp. Nice one.

The idea that anyone is "undoing" anything is ridiculous. It's called change, change and evolution, and it's eternal. There was a time when blackface was hugely popular and accepted. Is the fact that it's now not an example of cancel culture or undoing? The movie Birth of a Nation was a huge economic and artistic success about a hundred years ago with the KKK as the heroes. Should we bring that back to avoid "undoing" culture. This is just change and growth. Best if people just deal with it, as it appears that people have finally reached a point where they're not willing to accept this anymore.

I'm glad you agree. And the reason why we should stop with statues of people willing to lay down their lives for slavery is because that's what is socially unacceptable to most of America at this point. If the majority of America comes to see Mount Rushmore at some point as horrible in some way, that'll likely go too. You see that happening anytime in the near future?

Yeah, guess that's because of people holding the position that it's OK to keep the Redskins name. Or perhaps not. Where we are is ... at an inflection point. And again, it's about time. Muppy, "I'll root against them either way." Love it. Me too as long as Snyder owns them.