Thurman#1

Marty's teams were NOT usually the most talented teams. Player by players they were generally considerably less talented, but Marty got so much out of them that he could coach rosters that had no business being there into the playoffs. He had a lot of mediocre QBs through the years to work with and that didn't encourage him to open up the offense. The time he did have good personnel was that young Chargers team, and they lost to the Pats in the playoffs. Remember that awful play, the interception in the 4th quarter by SanDiego and the defender then fumbled during the runback and the Pats then continued the drive and scored a TD? Jeez. That was a very good Pats team, though they were outscored by the Colts in the Conference championship that year. What you saw again and again with Marty is that he'd inherit a team that wasn't good, with few wins, immediately start winning more, and when he'd leave the next year the team would immediately regress. Marty is undervalued. And yeah, Cowher underachieved in the playoffs. Remind me how he did when they were able to draft Roethlisberger? A little better than when he was forced to use that endless stream of guys like Neil O'Donnell, Kordell Stewart, Charlie Batch, Jim Miller, Bubby Brister, Kent Graham, Mike Tomczak and Tommy Maddox. The problem for those guys wasn't so much conservative play as it was bad quarterbacking and in Schotty's case, lesser talent on the roster.

They do a great job with their data. It's why most NFL teams subscribe. Not all of their entertainment product is particularly good. But they're consistent, methodical and thoughtful. Doesn't mean anyone has to agree with all their scores, of course. Intelligent disagreement is a good basis for discussion.

While that's true, it's also true that part of the reason there were a lot of drops is that Josh was rifling every ball in at mach speed, including the short ones. One of the major things he's done is develop touch so he's throwing balls much more catchably.

It is indeed a process, and in Allen's case a long one. But he absolutely did suddenly become great. He hit his tipping point. He's been improving consistently, but not being great except in short little flashes here and there. Now, suddenly he's terrific nearly all the time and is only showing short flashes of not being good. Did it come from consistent extreme effort and from trusting the process? Yeah. But it was absolutely sudden visible massive improvement. A lot of the process is beavering away learning and improving various facets of whatever you are getting better at without visibly making huge leaps upwards. Then you reach a tipping point and you're doing significantly more right than wrong and when you hit that point, your improvement is suddenly visible and obvious. That's where Allen is at. Some guys never reach that point. Thank goodness Josh did.

Yeah, but key injuries appear to have a major part in that, and those guys seem to be coming back not just enough to play but to play close to normal level. No Star really hurt those first four weeks. Hopefully our new 1-tech, who played pretty well last week, will also be part of the solution. I see no reason to worry about this defense ... yet.

Disagree. There's a reason he was interviewed as a head coaching candidate last year. Daboll's been very good. And that was when Allen couldn't carry anyone. Allen needed development. But not just any development. He needed smart, well-structured, thoughtfully systematized, well-scaffolded development. Plenty of guys who had the stuff to be real QBs have been ruined by crappy development and handling. The Bills did this really well. Yes, Allen gets a ton of credit too. But we'll miss him. But the mature Josh should be able to handle a different OC as long as he's good.

Yes, Daboll has been terrific since he got here. We're likely to miss him. Hopefully, though, with Allen here to dangle in front of possible OC candidates, we'll have an opening the best guys will be fighting over.

Remind me, did he wait till this year to draft Josh Allen? Yeah, he figured it out ... Probably around the year 2000 or so. The reason we have offense now is because they've been working on it like crazy men since they got here. And Allen finally hit the tipping point. And of course, they've been working on the defense like crazy too. Because you've got to be good on both sides. Because the best offense is also a good defense. That works both ways. Yes.

You should be. Feliciano's good but not that good. Same with Ford so far. lt'll depend how good Teller's pass blocking becomes. Both Ford and Teller are still developing and learning. If we'd had both, though, that would've been nice. He's developed a ton since leaving. And he's cheap. We could've used him. He's devastating people right now.

Yup, he is kicking ass and taking names.

With a healthy Cam they're considerably better than middlin'. They beat the Chiefs last week with Cam there. Without him, though, over time they'll be middling or below. Still have a fine defense.

Zero teams tanking, ever, in the NFL. Tanking is for leagues with fully guaranteed contracts. What you have in football is front offices who rebuild, controlling coaches and players who do their absolute best for the most obvious, self-serving reason, that it is directly against their self-interest to ever NOT give their best. As for how many teams are rebuilding, IMO it's about the same as ever. It's generally a few terrible teams and a team or two who have been consistently below average for a while. That's generally, within a margin of error, around the same number of teams at any given time. Just more interest in it now that there's a QB who appears to be about as much of as sure thing as you get out of college.

He really is not replaceable with what we have. A terrific player. Agreed that his skills would be valuable to many but not all teams. But if I were him and couldn't get a good contract this year, I would in no way sign for two years. One year only. 2022 is going to be the year when players hit major jackpots. There will be more money available under caps than has ever been in the history of the NFL and it's likely to be somewhere around twice as much as has ever been seen when all is said, done and counted. I'd expect his agent to tell him to sign a one year deal and be ready to score big somewhere in 2022. I'm hoping the Bills find a way to keep him long-term but it will be very tough with the COVID cap next year.

Still not 100%, but he looked very different the first game this year, and when he came out playing just as well the second game, I thought ... hmm, just could be the real thing.

No, it's you who's headed off in the wrong direction on this issue. They do market themselves as providing objective analytics. Their stats. Which are indeed as objective as they can make them. They also provide interviews and articles, which are not marketed as objective. I guess some of the articles, the ones more based on the stats, are more objective, but plenty are putting forth what they think are hopefully interesting opinions and thoughts. What you're referring to came in an interview and was very clearly NOT objective. His partners questioned him on it and the guy said that of course they didn't have enough data to know so far what Hodges was but based on what they'd seen so far, he'd take Hodges over Allen in terms of how they were playing now. Defended it a bit too strongly, as well, if I remember correctly but overall it seemed defensible to me. It was defensible at the time as well. They didn't say Hodges was better. They said he was playing better at that time, which was very reasonable, partly because we'd seen so very little of Hodges by then (he'd only thrown 80 passes at that time and had completed 56 of them, 4 TDs and 2 INTs and 682 yards and was coming off a 16 for 19 game against Arizona with a TD and 0 INTs and Allen was coming off a not especially great 17 for 39 game against an admittedly tough Baltimore team). There was so much of a fuss here about it that I went and watched that interview at the time. Don't remember who the two guys were but they were very clearly doing it to entertain. I wasn't impressed - never went back and watched again, but I thought the point they made on Duck and Josh was interesting. It made me go do a deeper dive on Duck, which was again interesting.

No, it was a question that the immature college version of Josh Allen might have blown up at. That's why he cringed at it but was subsequently impressed at Josh's growth and present-day maturity.

So anyone who says anything provocative, ever, should be ignored forever after? Please. I'm 100% sure that would put me on ignore to the world and I'm willing to bet that you've sometime riled someone up deliberately as well at some point. PFF is a damn good site. Not so much so some of the internet talks shows they have at times put out. But they're a terrific site, with a ton of useful interesting info. Which, again, is why most NFL teams pay for their info. That - of course - doesn't mean they're perfect in every evaluation. Their method apparently downgrades heavily for bad plays, which hurt Josh a ton the last couple of years. Put him lower than I thought he should be. They now have him as sixth-best according to the article. Yeah. That's the right neighborhood.

I did. You only get two or three Washington Post articles a month before you have to subscribe. If you've already read some, you can't read this one. But I don't subscribe and I was able to read it.

It's going to be a lot harder to bring in decent players at a decent price next year than it has been so far for Beane. Right now we have $2.8M estimated 2021 cap space and the rollover will likely be around $4M or less. That's just about enough to sign the rookies we draft, and We actually looked reasonably healthy, but this COVID thing destroyed next year's cap, and that will affect a lot of teams badly, including us. If we want a good RT next year we may have to draft one early. The one good thing is that guys who sign contracts next year will have to sign low. There just aren't a lot of teams with money. We might get a guy, maybe even Daryl Williams, to sign a team-friendly one-year deal, but I'm pretty sure Williams would like to avoid that if possible, having just signed a one-year team-friendly deal this year. There'll be ways to cut a bit here and there. But they have a lot of things they'll need to do just replacing Milano, Josh Norman, Murphy, Levi Wallace, Bojorquez, Boettger, Feliciano, Winters, Daryl Williams, Nsekhe, Tyler Kroft, McKenzie, Andre Roberts and Matt Barkley. Team depth will likely take a major hit and new holes will be developed and we're likely to take a hit in terms of total talent if things stay as they are as far as expected cap level.

Jerry has always complimented the Bills when they did well. They just didn't do well often during the last twenty years and sensitive Bills fans got their panties in a bunch. Constantly. When they went 5-1 the year Trent Edwards looked good, Jerry was wildly positive and said that if things continued Jauron deserved consideration as Coach of the Year. He would have been right too, if things continued, which they didn't. He's always been cranky but fair. And the Bills have been consistently poor to mediocre for a long long time, which led honest and realistic observers to say bad things. Of course he's saying good things. That's not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is that really good things are happening on the field and show every sign of being sustainable.

They probably don't want him running much if they don't have to. IMO this is pretty obvious. And sensible.

He's doing very well, but I don't want him to replace Brown. Brown's speed opens up holes. Davis runs nice routes and plays well, but having guys on both sides who scare defenses deep is really effective.

Yup. Don't give the ball to Josh on that play to get sacked out of field goal range. Give it to the RB and the game is over. Right, it's much better if you get ahead of Belichick teams and stay aggressive. Ask the Falcons. They totally stayed aggressive. That was a Super Bowl to remember. I'm sure the Falcs are thrilled looking back that they didn't start running, churning the clock and keeping the ball away from the Pats. And if you look at two out of KC's last four losses last year, the Colts beat them while scoring 19 - 13 and running the crap out of the ball the last three drives, and GB won by getting the ball back ahead by seven with five minutes left and ran the ball down their throat the last drive, eleven plays and only one was a pass.

Liuget was OK, but not particularly good. He was here from Week 5 to Week 16 and totalled 134 defensive snaps. Week 10, he had 17 then 19, then 12, then 17, then 0 then 21, then 38 in week 17 when it didn't matter.

He's just fine, better really, outside of the injury. It's harder to play ILB on that team with Star at home. You get blocked more. 26 is average so far? Hunh. Good post, I hadn't realized it was going that poorly for defenses.