Thurman#1

"Boy, that was so well-said." - Sully And Hap, it wasn't a 15 minute rant. It was a 2 minute rant in the first 15 minutes of Jerry's show.

That call's been working all year on third and long, and it should have worked again. That was on the players for drifting back too far.

If that were a particularly reasonable conclusion, I would, but it's not. Our coaches made some mistakes but also a lot of good moves, and O'Brien didn't come out looking like a genius or anything close. Sure seemed to me that the best part of his coaching was having Deshaun Watson at QB. Nice.

I wish I was as confident as you. Brady certainly has gone downhill but a lot of the offense's problems weren't on him, IMO. Just not true. Peyton had three game-winning drives and three 4th quarter comebacks that year. In nine games, seven of which were wins. Yeah, the defense was the main reason that team was good, and yeah, his arm wasn't close to what it had been. But they don't win that title without him there, they just don't. He rode his smarts, game sense and he maximized what physical gifts he still had. Compare his winning percentage with Osweiler's the same year and his point scored as well, and Osweiler played a significantly easier group of games than Peyton did. Again, they don't win that Super Bowl without him.

I'd disagree. He's been used a number of times on outs this year. You said, "never has been, " so I went back and the first old one I found had some good boundary play and a few leaps besides. They do need another guy or two to give Josh more choices and defenses more to think about. No question. I'd guess maybe another mid-priced FA and maybe a pick in the top three rounds as well.

He is absolutely a top 22 - 23 guy. All you have to do is look at his yards (21st) and TDs (tied for 24th), and his production. That's where it puts him, and again, he's being thrown to by Josh Allen, and he's on a team that throws less than most of the league. He's already there and he'd be higher if Josh had hit him on say half of the 5 or 6 go routes he threw to Brown open well beyond his man but Josh overthrew him every time. Brown's a #1.

Oh, you didn't understand? If it wasn't clear enough, I'll try to explain again. You said this in explaining your rules: Hill isn't a guy who "extends catch radius," a phrase that makes no sense by the way. He's a guy who gets open a lot with his speed and shiftiness. But he doesn't fit your rules here. Sure he occasionally jumps for a ball. So has John Brown. Wat. Know whose catch radius extend beyond the length of his arms? Octopuses? Guys using long sticks with stickum on 'em. That's about it. Guys with long arms have longer reaches. Nobody catches stuff beyond their reach, though. And for sure not Tyreek Hill. Nor does Tyreek Hill "fight through defenders" or anyway no more than John Brown or most smaller guys. Hill is faster and better than Brown, but he's not the kind of guy your rules describe. You include Tyreek Hill because you like him, which is fine, but he doesn't fit your own arbitrary qualifications. He's just good.

Yeah, everybody builds at least somewhat through FA. But the way the best teams consistently do it is to use FA to bring in low- to mid-level guys. Maybe a high-level guy once every four or five years. That's the way I expect them to go. Whether this year is one of those fairly rare exceptions when they bring in a high-paid guy, to me that's the question. I doubt it myself, but it certainly could happen.

That'd be free agent-crazy. Those are probably the top guy available at three different positions. That's not how they work, or will work in the future. One of them? IMO unlikely, but possible. Two or three? That goes up to wildly unlikely.

Haven't even watched it yet, but if that's a fair summary, it's perfectly in line with what they have said and done from moment one. It's also industry best practice. Me likey.

I don't mind Barkley. Brown and Beasley were on the bench and a couple of other starters. Wouldn't be shocked to see them look around, though.

It really wasn't. Brown was headed to the deep corner of the end zone. He was still on the numbers at the 10 when Josh threw. The throw led him outside and shallow. It would've been better if he'd put a soft touch throw up leading him straight. Could've been a TD not within range of the boundary. Still, it was a catchable ball and Brown just made a mistake by not dragging his feet.

I agree with more than half of your points, but I think you missed on a bunch. 1) That play where Josh got knocked to the ground was a very reasonable call. Neither guy hit him hard at all. Both pulled up. The guy who knocked him down reached down and took as much of his weight as he could to save him impact. Very reasonable no-call. 3) When the refs put the whistle away, you can't count on anyone to separate. Anyone. And yet Buffalo had guys open all game. Height and size were not the problem here. 4) I saw two plays where Brown had sideline problems, one of which seemed to be a result of lost footing. Yeah, the one where he kinda hopped forward was just a mistake. This isn't a problem he's had before. I'm not worried. 5) On the OT long heave to DiMarco, the play design worked. Josh threw to the wrong guy. You say Singletary was short of the marker. Fair enough, but it was 2nd and 13. It wasn't 3rd or 4th down. More, the CB was literally 10 yards away. Singletary was wide open and Singletary in the open field is always a good choice. He was going to get eight or ten yards and might easily have shook loose for a long one. And while I guess you can say Brown was bracketed on the play, the bracket was quite distant. There was plenty of room for Josh to hit him, it wouldn't even have taken a very accurate throw. He would've been quickly tackled but it would have been a gain of 17 or 18 yards and a first down. The play design worked. It confused them. McKenzie was triple-covered, for Pete's sake. They were confused. The throw went to the wrong guy. 9) White raked a fumble out of Hopkins' hands. That was huge. I saw four completions, including the fumble, plus the two-pointer. All but one was a short completion. Looked to me like Tre came out very well, especially when you consider the fumble. And Hopkins is a great player. Again, I agree with a lot of your post, and there was a lot to complain about in that game. The whole team deserved to share the blame.

I guess you're right, I don't get the concept. Is it "tall guys I like plus Tyreek Hill"?. That concept is not the concept of "#1 receiver." You've created a type of receiver in your mind that you like and created some arbitrary rules to fence out guys who you don't like. By your rules, Tyreek Hill doesn't belong. He doesn't have a big catch radius. By your rules, if Antonio Brown was sane and in the league this year he wouldn't belong. That's nuts. How you make catches is beside the point. A guy who gets open a lot, like Hill, or Antonio Brown or for that matter John Brown, is just as valuable as a guy with a big catch radius. And while it would be ideal to have a bunch of guys with complementary skills, you don't need a guy who fits your category. None of the SB winners have had one for a lot of years now. That type of guy isn't more valuable than a guy who gets open and makes plenty of catches in important spots because of it. A guy like Edelman, like Hlll, like Kupp. What is needed is three good receivers and maybe one more for depth. What the Bills need is a real upgrade to the guys currently behind Brown and Beasley. Whether he fits your rules is a bit beside the point. Whoever he is, he needs to be good. If he's good and also tall, that'd be just fine, but it's not a necessity. There's a bizarre obsession with height among Bills fans. That obsession with height rather than talent brought us James Hardy at pick #41 in a year when Desean Jackson went at #49. But he wasn't tall. We didn't need a guy like him.

Well, fine, then you're not using the phrase #1 receiver the way it's meant. You picked out 11 guys or so guys you like. For reasons that aren't clear, you left out guys like Edelman, Kupp, Robinson, Moore, Lockett and probably the guys you list as close. That's a group Brown belongs in. The reason the phrase is "a #1" is that it refers to whether the guy could be the best receiver, not the second best, or the third-best. It's a reasonable argument that several teams don't have a guy that deserves to be a #1, but equally several teams have two, both of whom could be considered #1s. I think it's reasonable to say that there aren't teams. Wanna say Brown isn't a top ten or twelve guy? That seems to be your argument, when you look at your list. If so, fair enough. He's not. But that's not a list of #1s. It's a subjective list of who you consider the best 11 in the game. Assuming for argument's sake that those are the top 11 guys in the league then yeah, Brown isn't a top dozen guy. Fair enough. But you're not using the phrase #1 receiver the way that it's meant.

Well, fine, then you don't understand what a #1 receiver is. If you want to say that Brown isn't a top twelve guy, which is what you are actually saying there, I don't think anyone will disagree with you. But as for #1s, there are probably around 25 - 30 #1s in the league at any given time, and Brown is very easily in that group. True, dat. He's much better. And I liked Chandler a lot.

When people say "a true #1," they seem to mean a top 5 or 6 in the league guy. You're right, he's not one of those. He absolutely is one of the top 22 or 23 receivers in the league, though, and that makes him a #1. And as for contested catches, that has nothing to do with being good, elite or whatever. It's only one part of being a receiver. Making catches, contested or not, that makes you a great receiver. Duke Williams makes contested catches, but he sure isn't a true #1. Receivers need to make catches. If they get open and make catches that aren't contested, that's the opposite of a problem. Plenty of great receivers don't make many contested catches. Go back and look at the 5 or 6 times Brown was open long and overthrown by Allen this year. There's no doubt he's a #1. He's not just good. There are probably 60 - 90 guys in the league who are good. He's really good. Elite generally means top three or four in the league. Nobody argues he's elite. They argue that he's a #1. Because he is.

Report post Posted just now Great receivers make mistakes sometimes. Same with playmakers, even at key moments. It has to do with being human beings. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens. John Brown is both a great receiver and a playmaker. But yeah, this was a mistake. He's a #1 receiver. He was 21st in yardage and tied for 24th in TDs despite the fact that they rested him the last week of the season, and he played on a team that threw the 24th most passes in the league, putting them in the bottom nine of the league. He's a #1. No, he's not a "true #1," but there are only about 6 or 7 of those guys in the league anyway. Yes, we need to upgrade the #3 receiver position on this team. No, Brown is not the problem in any way.

Poor win-loss records in the first three years of a rebuild say very little about the situation beyond the fact that it was a rebuild. That's generally what happens in rebuilds. The two losses this year do indeed count against McDermott. But those were both very competitive games. And though the Bills were a good team this year, next year was always likely to be the year when we saw what this group is fully capable of. If there's a new QB in Foxboro and it's not someone like Luck, I think they are no longer the dominant force they've been for so long. Though I wouldn't be surprised to see them still be a pretty decent team with 9 or 10 wins maybe, if they can get someone to be a game manager type.

Please. Manning wasn't bad in the playoffs. His playoff QB rating was 87.4. Brady's is 89.8. That's an insignificant difference. Brady has more playoff comebacks than Manning? Couldn't be because he's played more than half again the number of playoff games, could it? 41 vs. 27? The fact that Brady's team "had the lead with 2 minutes to go in the 4th quarter of 8 of 9 SBs" does indeed mean something. It means the New England Patriots defense had allowed fewer points than the New England Patriots offense had scored in 8 of 9 SBs. That's not a QB achievement, it's a team achievement. The two greatest comebacks really were great achievements for Brady, but also for the Patriots D, which suddenly figured out how to shut down both of those opponents late in the game. I'm not arguing that Manning's better, but it's not terribly unreasonable that Manning in Belichick's system might have been even better than Brady, and your arguments there are mostly weak. The Pats defenses really were better than the Colts, all through both QBs careers. And that absolutely did have a lot to do with both teams results.

Not at all. No, he wasn't the old Manning, but he was still the smartest QB in the game. He found ways to win. Yeah, the defense was terrific and was the main reason they win. But the offense did their job, particularly when it was Manning at QB. You can say that with Manning starting they went 7-2 and with Osweiler starting they went 5-2, but that would be missing the point. In Osweiler's seven games they scored 150 points, averaging 21.4 PPG. In Manning's nine games they scored 205, an average of 22.7. That's not a huge difference but it was against a tougher group. Manning's nine games contained five teams that went 8-8 or better. Osweiler's seven games contained three that went 8-8 or better. Manning managed three 4th quarter comebacks and three game-winning drives that year. They don't win that SB without Peyton Manning.

... and Bob Sanders. That guy was Polamalu-like. If he'd stayed healthy ... In 2006, their championship year, Sanders only played four games during the season and they allowed 5.3 YPC during the year, worst by almost half a yard per carry. Then Sanders played the whole playoff schedule and they allowed 4.1 YPC. They also had Robert Mathis. And a lot of pretty good players. But they were built mostly to defend the pass rather than the run. Very few teams could run much against them because who runs when they're 17 points behind?

Yeah, he went 11-5 with Matt Cassel ... against a historically easy schedule. Look at Miami's record the year before, that year and the year after. The AFC East had a gimme schedule that year like few in football history. Belichick's terrific, but without Brady they won't be the same. Yeah, if they get a top QB, it could all continue. Think they're going to get one? [EDIT: that post below about Andrew Luck coming back in Foxboro gave me heart palpitations. Man, I hope that doesn't happen.] Giving up Garoppolo was a move that will have repercussions for them for a long time. IMO we'll never see Brady playing for another team. He knows how good he's had it in NE. But I could see him retiring or not. I took little solace in that. They pulled Brady because it was Week 17 and they had nothing to win or lose. It was nice enough but meant no more to me than it did to the Pats.

The cap situation isn't thanks to Beane. It's thanks to Beane and McDermott. The moves made by McDermott before Beane got here were already rebuild-oriented financially conservative moves, which is precisely the opposite of how things went during the years when Whaley was making the decisions. The reason Beane is here is because McDermott gets along with him and has similar philosophies. McDermott was in the room when Beane was interviewed and you can bet that if he hadn't liked Beane and the way he does things, Beane wouldn't be here. Whaley lost his decision-making powers very very quickly after McDermott arrived. Whaley and McDermott have also made it clear that they do most of their decision-making by hashing it out and coming to consensus. Yes, if they disagree, Beane makes the decision on personnel. But they don't disagree all that much, as they've made clear. And their financial philosophies are just about the same, both pretty much right there with industry best practices.

There has never been the slightest bit of confirmation about this. Every time the Bills don't pay someone market value, the sour grapes crowd says he wasn't going to stay here anyways.