Thurman#1

Not so much, IMO. Much more about being built to stop the pass rather than the run due to being in a division filled with deadly passing attacks, the Fins in particular. And because of that our DL in particular was built small through the middle. How many 3-4 defences - then or ever - have we seen with the nose tackle, Jeff Wright for us, being 274 pounds? That's the main problem with us being soft against the run against power rush teams, which is what we faced in those Super Bowls.

I'm no expert, so this isn't an argument, it's a question. If you have to be found guilty of the DWI or DUI, how come PJ Williams, arrested for driving drunk and careless driving in New Orleans on 1/23/2019, pleaded down to "reckless driving" and was suspended for three games. Same question for Kareem Jackson arrested on 9/19/2019 for DUI in Denver pleaded down to one count of driving while alcohol impaired and was suspended for two games? Or Willie Snead, arrested for DUI on 6/11/2017 given a diversion program and counseling and suspended three games https://www.tsn.ca/broncos-safety-kareem-jackson-suspended-final-2-games-by-nfl-1.1414738 https://www.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/arrests/ https://www.nola.com/sports/saints/article_0929b8ac-17a2-5eef-bdc2-28c32cf39cb4.html

Nonsense. Star hasn't been middling and still isn't. He's still the same very fine space eater he's always been, the guy McD knew him to be and hired him to be. Fair enough that since the injury Murphy mostly hasn't been as good as they hoped. But he's also been improving and near the end of the year was playing pretty damn well, four sacks in the last five games and then two more in the playoff game, 15 of his 36 tackles in the last five games and 4 of his 9 tackles for loss in the last five games.

Yes, this offense has been poor overall. But no, it's really not fair to question their judgment there as yet. Just the opposite ... this is a front office that has brilliantly handled a near-complete rebuild and a simultaneous salary cap situation repair in a very short time. The reason the offense hasn't been good during their rebuild certainly isn't that they didn't have a fast RB. It's that for the first year they built the D and spent very few resources on the O, and the second year the line and WR/TE group were both sub-par, allowing teams to pack the box. And that's not even beginning to mention our QB situation those three years. As I said earlier, it's fair enough that you preferred someone else. Everybody has their own preferences, though I never looked much at McFarlane as it seemed very likely to me that he wasn't the type they'd be looking for. I was hoping for Dillon, myself, but apparently I wasn't the only one to like him, though I'm not sure I second-round liked him. But it's very clear they feel they need a hammer, not a speed merchant, and it's been obvious for a while that that's the institutional priority. Their FA moves these past three years have made that very clear.

Fair enough that they don't have a super-fast home-run threat at WR. Seems obvious by now they don't think that's a necessity, but they do think having a vertical pounder really is. They've had one guy like that every year McDermott's been here. Tolbert, Ivory, Gore. They want a hammer here. Beane said as much pre-draft when commenting on Yeldon and why he didn't get more carries behind Gore. They feel they need one. And since they've never had a home-run guy it's at this point pretty obvious they feel that's not a need, though they might at some point be happy if they could bring one in if the circumstances are right.

I didn't remember him dropping much, so I looked back and I don't think it happened that way. In his pre-combine big board Matt Miller had him #85, Kevin Hanson had him #88. Kiper had him the #5 RB (had Akers #8). DraftScout had him in the third from early. I don't think the combine affected him much. #85 and #88 would be just about exactly where the Bills had him, most likely, as he was their BPA at the time. I think teams saw what we see, that he was no 4.4 guy but that on the field he wasn't a 4.65 guy either. The thigh tweak news came out the same day as he ran the 40 at the combine and I think teams believed him. I think he went just about where he was always going to go. Does look like a nice pickup, though. In those pictures with Josh and Barkley and the group in California, his thighs are absolute tree trunks. He's a strong-looking dude, and the tape shows he played like one. EDIT: I see this has already been talked about. Never mind.

Yeah, it happened that way at a lot of houses, it looked to me. And yeah, that's where I think it came from. Interviews within the hour showed he was happy.

Really nice article by Gaughan. One quick quote that made me think: "It shows that the Bills need to create more space on offense and get the ball to players more often in the open field. Players who get the ball in space – whether it’s a deep ball, or a slant pass to a receiver or an accurate throw to a running back in the flat – tend to move faster."

Mathematically, you're right. If he completed only two more of his already attempted passes per game, that would fulfil the requirement. Thing is ... in the real world, he did not complete those two passes per game. It's only if you go to fantasyland and start pretending that he completed those passes. And you're quite right that 58.8% isn't very far from 60%. That's true. It also isn't very far from 57.6%. Equally far, actually. Should we start spinning fantasies about how close he is to that too, if only things were different, which they aren't? He did what he did. Talking about what he didn't do is irrelevant. Because he didn't do it. And the fact that his percentage was higher when he had faced bad defenses and then went down when he faced better ones doesn't imply that he was better than his stats. That's how stats work. You can't look at only the ones you like and take out the rest and think what you are left with means anything. If you try to figure out how good the passing defenses Allen and the Bills faced last year, you might look at how they ranked in defensive passer rating. Our opponents averaged out pretty close to average, 15.93th best in the league. The fact that a lot of the tougher ones came at the end of the year is beside the point. It only shows that the easier ones mostly came early. The two pretty much balance each other out.

26 and 17.84 to be more precise. https://scores.nbcsports.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232 http://hosted.stats.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232 The difference there is not 11 drops, it's 8.16 drops above average. If we subtract those 8.16 from Allen and then use that corrected figure to put him in the NFL rankings for completion percentage, that would put him at 31st in the league among guys with 100 or more receptions. And again, part of the reason he had more drops is that he is still throwing too many short passes without touch.

This kind of logic, "If he had 2 more completions per game, that would give him 303 completions ..." always cracks me up. Essentially what it says is that if you changed his stats, they'd be different. Yeah, fair enough, but with zero logical force. Sure if you changed things they'd be different. But they aren't different. They're what they are. If you changed every other QB's stats, they'd be different too. And yes, Brees had even fewer yards than Allen this year. Think that might be because he missed more than five games with an injury? In any case, Brees' yards per attempt, a much better gauge of how long the passes you're throwing are than total yardage, are significantly higher than Allen's, 7.9 YPA (10th in the league) vs. Allen's 6.7 YPA (27th). And yes, drops have an effect. But you also have to factor in what caused the drops. Some of Allen's were caused by throwing short passes much too hard without touch. Plenty were on the receiver, but when you have the problem Allen does with not yet having incorporated enough touch into his game, the drops will go up. There are all kinds of different figures for drops, because which incompletions are drops is pretty subjective. But let's pretend that the QB has no effect on this stat and just look at the numbers. The Bills had 26 drops last year according to most sites. The NFL average was 18. That's a difference of eight passes, half a drop per game over the average. Allen went 271 for 461 last year. Change that to give him the same number of attempts and eight more completions and his completion percentage would go up just over 1.5%. That would put him 31st in the league in completion percentage, without adjusting any other QB's stats. That's not a significant improvement when compared to other QB completion percentages. Not that completion percentage is an especially great indicator of accuracy. But it's the one you used, so I pointed out the flaws in the numbers that you used. He isn't especially accurate. He throws dimes one moment and misses badly the next. He's inconsistent. He can improve, and he seemed to improve some last year. But it's likely to be a problem down the line to some extent. Perhaps he can improve other facets of his game to make up for this problem. That seems reasonably possible to me.

400 points would be nice, but that's a team measure, not a QB stat.

You're right, but it's equally true that if you don't have a QB within the top 10 or so in the league, your chances of winning a championship are miniscule. The majority go to teams with QBs in the top five but there are plenty more that go to guys who aren't. Wentz wasn't top five. Wilson is now but he wasn't when the Seahawks won. Eli was definitely playing at a top ten level during both championships. In the first one, he wasn't anywhere close to that for most of the season and he saw the light come on in the last two or three weeks. Top ten but not top five. Roethlisberger's never been a top five guy, always just barely outside that. Simms. There are a few teams who've won championships without top ten QBs. But to do that you generally need a defense that is one of the best not just of that season but of all time. Only then can you generally win one with a QB like Dilfer or McMahon. Around 10% of all SBs are won this way, and out of all the thousands of teams that don't have a top ten QB, the odds on being one of those winners are just tiny. The difference between 10 and 15 isn't that great, you're correct. But that difference seems to make all the difference. As for the original question, I'm not really interested in that kind of guesswork. I'd rather hope that my hopes are more than hopefulness without guessing either way. But that's me.

While I do enjoy talking to you, I disagree completely that it's mostly about the coach. I think we disagreed back then about Tyrod (you said after that first year that Tyrod didn't need to improve to be considered a franchise QB, that he was there, and I said that he really wasn't, that the Pats had figured him out and after that so had everyone else, that his present arc was what he'd done the last seven games or so and that that wasn't good enough and that unless we saw major improvement from him he wouldn't be around long). We've also consistently disagreed about what we're talking about now, your belief that football is about the coach. I think it's far more about the GM and the roster he puts together. And while I still don't mind the Benjamin move all that much for the reasons you state, it was a third round pick they spent on him and that's a real loss. That was a failure, a 3rd and $8+ mill in dead money the next year because the Panthers had picked up his option and we ended up inheriting that. It's true that they don't make the playoffs in 2017 without Benjamin. His catches won two games for them if I remember correctly. But me, I didn't care whether they made the playoffs or not that year. It was wildly obvious to me that even if they made the playoffs they weren't going to do damage there. I'd rather have had a higher pick the next year. It was nice for Kyle Williams, though, that was good to see. And it was nice for some people who really felt the drought hanging over their heads, I guess. I'm a long-range guy, though, every time. Nothing matters to me except the future till the team is legitimately title-competitive. Can't believe there's a pretty decent chance that that day is finally here. Agreed, though, that the Benjamin move wasn't the horrible failure people talk about it as. It was a smaller failure. IMO the fact that that's one of Beane's worst decisions is a terrific sign. Everyone fails. If your worst screw-ups are only that size, though, you're doing very well indeed.

Nice. Yes.

Good stuff, Thank you.

Blew up in their faces? Just the opposite. They've been moving towards this. The guys you cite as bringing in vets that they were comfortable with ... the guys like Ivory, Joe Webb, Tolbert, Derek Anderson, even Vontae Davis, (who couldn't have been predicted to quit ... I mean it's not like folks on here were saying when they signed him, "Vontae Davis, he's a quitter. He'll let us down." That was unpredictable.) were low-cost guys. They were brought in to fill positions during seasons when the Bills were forced to deal with the Whaley salary cap problems by making it a priority to get the cap under control. Tolbert's contract was less than $1M for his one year. Same with Kerley, Webb I suppose you can say Ivory underperformed a bit but he wasn't highly paid. None of them were. I think we can all agree that the Kelvin Benjamin move sure didn't work out. But you seem to be saying - am I wrong? - that the Dareus, Watkins, Darby, Glenn and Ragland moves blew up in their faces, and that makes no sense to me whatsoever. It's not a coincidence that Watkins and Dareus are now making less than half of what the Bills were paying them. Darby's been OK but the Bills haven't missed him, they've done well with cheaper fill-ins performing well. Ragland's now earning $1 mill on a one-year contract and is a guy who didn't fit the scheme, as showed by the very different type of LB that we've used under McD. Those moves made sense in every way, particularly as cap-savers and having brought in draft capital for acquiring Josh and, as it turned out, Edmunds too. Mathews was injured, that might've worked out if he hadn't been, he was on a very cheap contract. They were doing a near-complete rebuild and at the same time having to completely revamp their cap status. Doing that and still making the playoffs twice in three years was a near-miracle. Agreed that the Bills have always stressed character. But I'd argue that previous regimes didn't commit to it as strongly as this regime has. This group has brought in a ton of that kind of guy to build their locker room chemistry in that mold. As has been pointed out ad infinitum, there's one at every position group. Older regimes didn't commit that seriously to that. For me the differences are that McDermott has a much more detailed, smarter plan and had it from the beginning, that that plan included a rebuild and bringing in a QB with a realistic chance to be a franchise guy, and yeah I agree with you that a lot of the rest is that they simply have a far more talented roster than they've had since maybe 2004 or probably even back to the Levy days. Beane has been a revelation.

I disagree with that. Bad coaching can lose games and limit what talent can do. Good coaching allows talent to play to the limits of their ability. But it's mostly about talent and the players. This is indeed a well-coached team but they were that for all of the last three years. The difference is that they're now a well-GM'd team and that GM has finally put together the roster they've been working towards. Pundits had the Bills just about exactly right last year, good enough to play well especially with a weaker schedule but not good enough to seriously compete. The roster wasn't good enough. And IMO they've got them right this year too ... they've got the roster to compete, to win in the playoffs, to be among the top few teams ... all dependent on how well Allen plays. They've finally got the roster, and it's been a long long time since we could say that.

I get the cheating thing totally, though I've always felt that most of that's on the FO rather than Brady, with the exception of the ball pressure thing, of which he was pretty clearly guilty. But as for tantrums, that's just a bad frame on what for a player we like would be called competitiveness or lighting a fire under their tails or keeping everyone committed, or getting in people's faces, and so on. You look at guys like Ed Reed or James Harrison or Lawrence Taylor or for that matter Jim Kelly. Think they didn't scream at people as much as Brady?

Based simply on what we've already seen of McDermott's record, it seems clear to me that you're wrong about this. They've put together a consistently excellent defense without stars, without spending much money. And that defense has driven this team. That's all McDermott. Well, some Leslie Frazier thrown in, maybe, but McDermott's scheme has paid off in overperformance with terrific consistency. His results are a lot better than acceptable so far, though I'd certainly agree with anyone who said he still has a lot to prove. I'm sure he'd agree.

Coaches don't have to be fiery. They have to be committed, but there are tons of wildly successful coaches who are low-key. Hell, Belichick is low-key. Landry, Nick Saban. They aren't screamers. They're workers. And so is McD. And as for why Hughes couldn't fill the role, it's because that's not who he is. Hughes is a talent, but we never hear much about him being a leader. He isn't that guy, and Murphy is. The role they are talking about is a role based not on production, but on personality, leadership and pure drive. That's, as was mentioned earlier in the thread, probably why they liked Gore and DiMarco so very much. Hughes doesn't appear to be that one guy at the position that this FO likes. Agreed. And, I'm guessing, Chris Kelsay, a guy who was loved by the coaches at the time just for these reasons.

Agreed. Great point.

Whenever someone posts one of those OBL links, I go there, hit the button and nothing happens. I do that a lot, and get the same result. Eventually I leave. Same thing happened yesterday.

What you decide he is or isn't allowed to be is 100% beside the point. It's what he actually is that is the only important thing. They're right that he needs to improve this year. They're also right that he's a project currently, and that's pretty likely to be an ongoing thing for a while. This was an excellent point from the article, "He doesn’t even have two full seasons worth of games under his belt at the NFL level. Allen has less games under his belt in the NFL than Baker Mayfield and Lamar Jackson had in college alone." That's a great observation. Mayfield played 48 games in college alone, and at a higher level, and then 30 in the pros, while Allen played in 27 games at a lower level at Wyoming, and seven before that at Reedley JUCO, an even lower level. Of course he's still developing. And yet with all that extra time and work behind him, Mayfield regressed and showed he needed development also. Fans want to deny that development may be needed because some guys don't need it. They say that because fans are impatient these days it's no longer time that guys are allowed. Not true. Some guys still need it. And the smarter teams go by the needs of the QB, no matter whether the fans get impatient. Fan impatience is totally understandable, but it's like getting mad at bad weather. Some years are good. Some aren't. Some QBs need time. Some don't. Aaron Rodgers, Alex Smith and Eli Manning are guys who needed time. And were given it. Eli for one didn't see the light come on till the last two or three games of his fourth year. Hell, Brady wasn't the player he's become till around 2005 - 2006. Some guys take time. If we're very very lucky, our guy will have made huge strides in the offseason and be past his development stage. But that's very unlikely, especially with how this offseason is, um, developing.

That's a shame. Lost and suggestible. Good luck to him. He needs it.