Thurman#1

As usual ... when you like what's said, discuss it and approve it. When you hate what's said, attack the messenger. Which has no logical value whatsoever but feels good. IMO that has Allen too low by maybe 3 to 5 spots. Darnold's too high, I think, and Allen's better than Minshew. But whatever.

Yup, I am indeed living in the past. Specifically, looking at what Beane has done in the past and what it shows about him and how he operates. More, I look at what he's said in the past. And he's never said or done anything to indicate that BPA is a strategy that is, "not appropriate to a team that is in the top 10 or so." Know who believes that? You. Not Beane. Beane's past does indeed show that he goes BPA. He says he will. Then he does it every single time. And then he tells us that he did it. That's how it works with him. He's a BPA guy. And he's continued to say so this year. Every time he's asked. I get it. You don't like that. And if you were the GM of the Buffalo Bills, that would worry me deeply. But it doesn't concern me in the least that there's a guy on the internet who believes that drafting for need is a good idea. That's fine. If it were Beane who thought that, I'd gird my loins for another few years losing. We've had a lot of GMs through the years of the drought who would make moves for need. Thank goodness Beane believes just the opposite You perceive a need at RB2. Fine. And you think that having a need MUST mean that it MUST be addressed as early as possible in the draft. Again, fine. But that's classic drafting for need and classic willingness to reach to fill that need. Again, totally fine that that's your opinion. But it's not Beane's.

Yeah, I get that you think I'm wrong. Thing is, I'm not. I didn't say we didn't move up as you imply. I pointed out that the situations were very specific ... every single time. Which is correct, they were. You're the one who was wrong here. Here's what I said again, and it's true again: Each time we traded up, we were either acquiring a franchise QB with a huge stash of draft capital we'd built up specifically for the purpose, and that other than that we didn't leave ourselves any empty rounds, trading only picks from rounds where we had two or more. That's the pattern. And if they continue it, it would make total sense that they would at some point during this draft trade one of our two sixth-round picks to move up. That would move us up very little in the 2nd round, though. And if you feel the need to kid yourself that we didn't use BPA ... hey, that's your business. I'm not going to try to persuade you of something you're not willing to believe. But for others reading here, the huge majority are very very aware that Beane constantly talks about BPA, literally every single time he's asked, for a very simple reason, and that that reason is that he's a BPA guy. He uses BPA because he believes in it. You're right, "there's no magic Big Board in the sky," but there actually is a Big Board at OBD, probably in Beane's office, and he'll use it. Again, that's fine if you want to ignore that, go ahead. And yes, they've built a very balanced team. They build the core for the future through the draft. And they fill in holes and balance the team by filling in needs through FA and occasionally trades such as the Diggs trade. Every year he talks about using FA (and trades) to fill in the gaps so he cau use BPA in the draft. Again, he's said so a million times and he's backed up his words every time.

This is a perfect example of how to talk yourself into a reach. More, you're wrong at nearly every one of those five steps. Your second idea is that he gets difference makers in the draft. Nonsense. He sometimes gets difference makers and sometimes not. Oliver, Edmunds, maybe Singletary, Allen was developmental, hell they weren't going to start him till late in the season till they were forced to ... that's about it as far as difference makers. What he does is pick the BPA. If he'd wanted difference makers he wouldn't have grabbed Ford - especially when they clearly are still trying him at tackle rather than guard - when guys like Greedy Williams, AJ Brown and Mecole Hardman were available. Third, yeah, he didn't get an RB in FA. Yet. No particular reason to think he won't though. There are five or six very solid vets sweating it out watching their price go down. That could easily still happen. And we do have a 2nd running back, just not one with any glamor. Fourth, if they do grab an RB at some point, it could very very easily be a change of pace back, a hammer such as AJ Dillon or Perine or Eno Benjamin. The kind of guy you're talking about is what you want. Which is fine. But no reason to think it's what Beane and McDermott want. Was last year's RB2 a home run hitter? And fifth, there is absolutely no reason to think that the guys beyond the top five are JAGs, none whatsoever. This is a terrific draft for RBs in the mid-rounds. We get it that you won't be happy without an RB in round two. But that's precisely how reaches happen, when guys fix on what they want and then let confirmation bias have it's merry way with them. It's not how this FO operates, though, luckily. You're not hiding your desperation, I'll give you that. You come right out in your last sentence and say it, "If ... we lose and ... use BPA at #54." Using BPA isn't losing. It's the smart play. It's their draft strategy and a major part of what has gotten this roster so good so fast.

Yeldon's 4.0 could do it, if necessary. It looks like the Bills love the guy. And for RBs who have 150 carries or more, Yeldon's 4.0 would tie for 20th in the league, which isn't bad. Not great either, certainly. But not that bad. I expect them to bring somebody in, but I'd bet they don't feel compelled so much as happy to do so if the opportunity makes sense. No need whatsoever for them to overpay or reach. And while I don't agree with you on that assertion, if RB2 is the biggest need on the roster, that's less a sign of what a big need it is than of what a solid roster they've put together. My guess ... a 3rd, 4th or 5th in this draft and a happy bunch of fans later. I hope it's A.J. Dillon, myself.

Of course players took discounts. Some anyway, a few. It's not like that only happened to the Pats. It happens to the top five teams or so in football every year. Not most guys, but some will give discounts. As for the cheating, yeah I think they did it. But it's not the main reason they were a great team year in and year out. It's irrelevant in this discussion.

Love most of this post. Great stuff. But voiding the Pats rings is deeply twisting the data. EDIT: And Gunner is right when he says that removing McNabb as an overpay doesn't make sense either. There's always an overpay, that's how it works with a constantly rising cap. Sometimes the guy getting the overpay will be a Mahomes, and other times a guy like Cousins or Goff. That's how it works at every position, the rising cap means rising salaries which generally means whoever got the most recent deal and has a possibility of being really good will get what looks right then like an overpay.

Jerry Hughes will be 32 when the season starts. If you can start developing a guy to take over, this year would be an excellent time to do it. https://socalledfantasyexperts.com/aging-curve-nfl-defensive-players-dl-lb-db/ https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1683775-when-does-age-catch-up-to-nfl-players I respectfully disagree that backup RB is our #1 need. I think if it came down to Yeldon as our #2, Beane and McDermott wouldn't have a big issue. Not that they won't pick up an RB, it seems very likely but it's not as big a need as people make it out to be. Further, the draft isn't for filling needs in the current year. That's FA's role. The draft is where you try to get your core players, particularly past the first round and on a roster stocked like this one. That's their draft philosophy and it makes sense. Having said that, my guess is that they'll bring in another RB either in FA or later in the draft. IMO they've done a brilliant job in FA and with the trade of putting themselves in a position where they don't have any needs even approaching desperation. They've tried to do that every year and this year the roster is really filling in nicely. They've given themselves the luxury of going BPA, which is precisely their goal. And yeah, it's a slightly modified BPA. They're not going QB in the 2nd even if one is the BPA. Probably one or two other positions even beyond the painfully obvious of punter, kicker and LS. Guard, maybe? Center? And thirdly you have to consider the positional values. This year is a terrific year for WRs and RBs. You can get one of those in the fifth round that you'd ordinarily have to pick in the 2nd or 3rd. So you can wait a bit on those and still get great value and that has to be factored in. Overall, though, Beane is in position to go BPA, with positional needs not forcing him to reach. In fact, positional surpluses this year can allow you to fall back for value. And value is a good thing.

Many problems with this. First, Beane wasn't here the first year. And second, the second year was the year they gathered an absolute ton of draft capital to move up and get a QB. Then they were lucky enough to have a lot left over that they could not reasonably guess they would. They had worked out a much more expensive deal with Denver for the #5 pick, but Denver backed out when Chubb was still there and despite having to wait a while, the Bills were lucky enough to get the QB they'd have taken at #5, but much cheaper. Excepting the year Beane wasn't here and the trade up for Josh Allen, Beane's never traded up by trading away a pick that left a round empty, with the exception of if they'd already taken a pick for that round earlier. But wait, what about the Edmunds trade, you say. Nope, that's a good example. They emptied the 2nd round to make that trade, but had taken two guys in the first. So they'd already sort of taken their 2nd rounder, but they'd got him in the first. Leaving out those two, the Allen and Edmunds move when they had a bounty of draft capital, they've traded later round picks for small upward jumps, retaining a say in the round they were trading out of. Other than the Allen trade, which they wildly stocked up for in advance, Beane has never traded up emptying a round. If that continues, it would mean they might trade up this year with one of their two sixth picks. And if that's the kind of trade-up you're talking about, then yeah, I think they might do that too. They currently have two picks in the top 120. Three picks in the top 160. The odds Beane will give up one of those picks in a trade-up are pretty low, I believe. Below that, maybe, and especially one of the two sixths seems quite possible.

Deeply. There are many reasons, but Belichick's too old, for one.

Yeah, they'd probably both be big nickels. Some teams are using their tall receivers as slot guys to create matchups where typical slot corners can't handle them. If you're not facing one of those big WRs that week you can put a big nickel on a TE, in zone, as a box safety ..... The great thing about guys like this is they can do so many things that having them in isn't a tell on whether you're playing zone or man or what.

The main option for moving up for an RB in the second is the one you left out: DON'T. Again, this is a year with terrific RB depth. Starters will likely be drafted as late as the 4th and 5th this year. RB is the second-best position this year by most reckonings, after WR. That's the kind of year you wait and get your platoon guy later. A lot of really backs there ... Eno Benjamin, Perine, Joshua Kelley, McFarland, Darrynton Evans, or my favorite, the 6'0" 247 pound A.J. Dillon, who ran a 4.53 40 and pancaked people all year while being outrageously productive. And yeah, highlight reels all look good but this guy's traits are outrageous and he showed himself every bit as productive as those traits would indicate. When you can get a guy like this in the 4th or 5th, why would you spend a high pick on a platoon guy? You wouldn't.

Lock is a bit strong. Pretty likely, though. It's not going to mean as much to make the playoffs from now on, though. Two more creampuffs won't make the product better.

Fair enough that it wasn't the worst roster when they took it over. But the situation was probably even worse than if they had had the worst roster. If you've got the worst roster, at least you're going to have a tremendous draft pick and probably a shot at a franchise QB. Part of the problem with the Bills during the long long drought was that they were never really any good, yet at the same time they were very rarely truly awful. So they never had shots at obvious franchise QBs. They did a terrific turnaround. They inherited consistent mediocrity, arguably the worst situation for a football team. But not only were they mediocre, not only did they have no franchise QB, but beyond that the salary cap situation was really bad. Whaley's salary cap looked like that of a team in a Super Bowl window. The situation they inherited wasn't just bad, it was awful. They didn't have a good enough roster to reload. And their roster wasn't bad enough or free enough in cap room to maximize a rebuild.

It's really not that difficult to evaluate without knowing what the team is telling him. We do it constantly, in most posts. NFL teams do it constantly in their film study and they learn a ton, which is why they do it even though they don't specifically know what the other teams told their players. Is it possible to perfectly grade them without knowing? No, of course not. But is it very obvious on most plays what most guys was supposed to do by looking at the situation and what the guys around him are doing? Yeah, it is. Sometimes you can't know. But most of the time it's not that difficult. Fair enough that you don't care what they say, though. That's your choice and a fair one, but as you say, NFL teams subscribe. If what PFF do was useless or unreasonable, they wouldn't.

Heh heh. Yup, it's important to remember ... when you like what's said, discuss it. When you don't like what's said, attack the messenger. It's important to get that right.

Yeah, not to mention that Miami is fairly likely to draft Tua or someone early and the Pats are likely to pick up a (roughly) $8 - 15 million (average salary, though perhaps cheap this year) FA after they make cap room elsewhere (extending Gilmore, Thuney and/or Hightower and cutting a few, and/or maybe draft one reasonably early besides.

This. This is a terrific year for RBs. And that's not the kind of year in which you trade up. It's be like the trade-up that got us Sammy Watkins in a WR-rich year, though it wouldn't cost as much. But we don't have a lot of picks this year, especially with the first rounder gone. My guess is we don't see a trade-up in the 2nd, anyway, and none at all unless it's a fairly small move that can be made giving up only a 6th. I'd argue Singletary, Diggs and John Brown all put fear in opponents. Brown was open but overthrown on 5 or 6 long bombs last year. We may tend to forget those plays, but you can bet offensive coordinators don't.

The OP posted a third-generation report, a story by Justin DeLoro that was in turn about another story by Michael Shapiro which was yet again a story about a third story, by Albert Breer. What you get with third-generation stories is confusion. Which is why when you post something like this you should go to the original story and post from that. I'm putting excerpts from the original story below. It's an interesting one, about coronavirus and its effects on football. "Amid America’s coronavirus crisis, NFL players aren’t exactly the most afflicted, but as is the case for basically all of us, life has become considerably more complicated for them. Allen, who was traded from Carolina to Washington, is just another example, holed up in what amounts to a QB quarantine in Orange County (yes, there are worse places to be stuck), with a lease set to expire in a few days. “ 'I might have to crash at Sam’s,' [Kyle] Allen said Wednesday morning. "Sam is Jets quarterback Sam Darnold, and the two of them, plus Bills quarterback Josh Allen, make up this particular cluster who happened to be together when everything changed two weeks ago. They’ve been there since the Super Bowl, in what’s basically a developmental retreat with their throwing coach Jordan Palmer, an hour South of Los Angeles. "And until two weeks ago, that was going as you might expect. Each quarterback got his work in, and they got their downtime too, as part of a process most NFL players go through this time of year in slowly ramping up to their teams’ offseason programs in April. "Now? Now, it seems certain those offseason programs will be at least abbreviated, if not called off all together. In fact, even starting training camp on time in late July/early August isn’t a sure thing, and everything between now and then is in question. Everyone’s adjusting as such, because, really, no one has a choice. Allen certainly has had to, more so than most others. But his story, given the circumstances, isn’t that unusual." https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/26/nfl-player-offseason-coronavirus-kyle-allen Then there's a bunch about how Kyle Allen got there. There's an interesting bit about fitness plans for guys who don't want to go to public gyms: "But both of these older guys, and most other NFL players, have gotten road maps from their teams. The Chiefs’ strength coaches sent their guys two separate plans: one a dumbbell-based program for guys who do have a weight-room setup at home, and one a body-weight centered workout for those who don’t. The 49ers took similar measures, and even sent their guys ways to buy discounted weight-room equipment, if they want to buy stuff. A note about Josh and Kyle Allen's lease on the house there: "The plan, before all this, [for Kyle] had been to go to Charlotte next week when the lease on the Orange County house he’s renting with Josh Allen expires. That, obviously, is out the window now. He thought about going home to Arizona instead, but that doesn’t work either. Someone at his mom’s work got COVID-19, so she’s in a 14-day quarantine now, and going there would mean entering a new quarantine." ... some more from Kyle's POV .... "For now, he’ll stay in the seven-person quarantine he’s in. He, Josh Allen and their girlfriends are in the one house; Darnold’s in a house he just bought 15 minutes away; and Darnold’s USC teammate Matt Lopes (who’s now working in the Trojans’ football program) is working with the group too, as is Palmer. "As it is, the quarterbacks wake up every day and, because all the parks and fields around them are shut down, go throw on the beach by Darnold’s house—something Allen sees benefit in, in that it forces you to throw from your core. After that, they go lift, which is also a little complicated. The gym they’d worked out of is closed, so their trainer found a friend with a weight setup in what Allen says is a “40-square-foot garage” that they can use. After that, they’ll go back to the house, eat lunch, play cards, watch TV, play some more cards and eventually watch movies at night. The biggest problems, really, are losing the chance to work with the rehab guy they’d been using, and fighting boredom. “This is really how we lived anyway,” Allen said. “It’s just 24/7 now. It’s an interesting time. You talk to some people, and they’ll say the football part of it is similar to the lockout year, we might have nothing until camp. And maybe we’ll look around the league in August, and there’ll be some teams that took advantage of the time, and some teams that didn’t. That’s the most interesting part. “What happens to OTAs? Training camp, maybe that’ll only be four weeks.” "But all of that’s still a long way off. Of more immediate concern is where all these guys will be next week. Josh Allen’s looked into the idea of going back to where he grew up, near Fresno, or even to Buffalo. Kyle Allen’s looking into Airbnb’s close by. "And if all else fails, there’s always Darnold’s couch." The article's very good. This is about 30% of it. The stuff about how the virus is affecting the league is also worth a look, IMO.

It's pretty common to see 5 DBs these days on many plays and sometimes even 6. And these guys get injured reasonably often. They've got delicate hammies and often seem to have leg issues of one kind or another. Not all of them but enough that in many seasons it's an issue for a very fair number of teams. With Gaines back the need is lessened but you can never have too many of those guys and it seems that in many seasons you need more than you think you will.

Twenty years ago an RB not treated as a bell cow might have worried about it, as that was the standard. These days there are so guys who aren't platooned that I don't think it can affect a back's confidence. And I've always thought that when that RB appears to improve late in the game after pounding away for awhile, it's not so much that he's improving as that the defense is exhausted, and any back would look good running against them at that moment. And while I think a 2nd round back would be a major surprise, I fully expect them to bring one in somewhere between the 3rd and 5th. And for him to be pretty good.

Watching games has nothing to do with it, and anyone - you or anyone - assuring us he can't beat 1 on 1s consistently is talking nonsense. I have Game Pass too. And I don't doubt that you know what you're talking about a huge majority of the time, but Star does his job against 1 on 1s with extreme regularity and against double-teams very consistently. He eats blocks and frees LBs. No, he's not wildly athletic and no he isn't as good at getting off blocks as some but he is a very very good space eater. That is what he does to stop the run, he eats blocks and by doing so frees other guys to run to the ball. That's why he's still here and will be for his third year and very possibly his fourth as well. McDermott likes him.

Yeah, it seemed like a money thing to me. A good player with some weaknesses. I didn't see evidence of a free-lancing problem, but some problems with run defense.

I don't know if it will take two seasons. Right now in terms of the 2021 cap, the Pats are 5th in the league in cap space, with $105M free.

My guess is Dalton and I've always thought he's underappreciated. I think they'll be able to be a solid team with Dalton, likely a playoff team. But yeah, Brady was the secret sauce there. I agree with you that the dynasty is over there unless Stidham is a lot better than we think he is.