Thurman#1

Are you misreading your own stats? We're not at the bottom of the league targeting RBs. Your own link there has a bunch of other teams with lower RB targets, Seattle, the Rams, the Titans, the Ravens and the Texans. More, we simply throw fewer passes than most teams, we're 27th in the league in attempts. So of course we're likely to throw less passes to RBs than most. Probably less passes to WRs as well ... we just throw less passes. Look at the Cowboys, who've thrown 67 to Zeke alone. We've only thrown 73 passes to backs, while the Cowboys have thrown 87. But we've only thrown 473 passes, while the Cowboys have thrown 564 passes, meaning they throw 15.4% of their passes to backs while we also throw 15.4%. Go out an extra decimal place and you find we throw more to backs than they do. Some teams tend to have the RBs block more on pass plays, and we're one of them. That's not a bad thing for the QB, having an extra blocker as a last reserve. Most of the reason Josh's % is low is that he airmails a few inaccurate passes a game. That's not the only factor, of course, but it is the main one.

He's really protected the ball better in the passing game. But he's fumbled nine times since then. Whether or not those fumbles were lost is really just a matter of luck. Fumbling nine times in ten games is just plain not good. On the other hand, he's lost none in the last two games. Is that luck or a trend? We can hope it's a trend.

We've got our #1. Brown is easily one of the top 25 in the league and that makes him a #1. Yeah, we could use a "true number one," but they're very rare. People usually mean by that phrase a guy in the top 5 - 8 guys in the league. Those guys usually don't become available in FA and to have good odds of drafting one you'd better be in the top ten and hopefully the top five. More, when was the last SB-winner to have a "true number one" on the roster? You have to go back a ways. You get an average of, what?, one a year coming into the league? If that's all you'll settle for, well, good luck. If that's a "need," it's one that's unlikely to be filled. I agree we need to upgrade at WR. But a true number one is very unlikely to be found where we draft or in FA. I mean, yeah, you can get yourself an ex-true number one pretty often, but not often one who still deserves being called that. But a Billy Brooks level talent that punishes teams for doubling the John Browns and Cole Beasleys, that we could find. And if we get lucky he'll be a bit better than that.

You can't just go out and order a true #1. We tried with Watkins. There are maybe seven or eight of those guys in the league, and that means there's generally one or fewer of them coming in in any given year. They're a very rare breed. In any case, that's not a need. It would be lovely, but it's not a need. Brown and Beasley are fine as our #1 and #2/slot. At WR they need another guy or two to upgrade the guys behind those two. Hopefully they can get someone who's a good player and maybe a bit complementary. The way they brought in Billy Brooks back in the old days. If one of the upgrades is good enough to be an upgrade for Brown, that'd be unlikely but terrific. Nsekhe seems fine at RT. When he gets back from his injury, things will be better at RT. An upgrade? Not an absolute necessity, but yeah, that would be great too. A pass-rushing DE? Agreed. Another RB? Fair enough. Another CB, probably. I'd guess we address them all in FA, allowing us to truly go best player available in the draft.

Yeah, you gave 2017 Seattle as an example and pointed out exactly the problem with that example. They were damn close. They had Russell Wilson and we had Tyrod Taylor. Seattle had more money than Buffalo, $26 mill in March and had far fewer important FAs they had to re-sign. The biggest guy they risked losing in FA that year was if I remember, Luke Willson. And is going from 9-7 to 10-6 and a playoff game loss really a reload from 2017 to 2018? IMO they never changed much of anything, they kept their system going. They just recovered from a down year. The year before that down year, they went 10-5-1, won a playoff game and only lost to the SB-bound Falcons. I don't consider that a reload. That was a team with a terrific core just working their system. As you yourself point out, our team was in a totally different situation. Maybe we're using the word "reload" differently. To me, a reload means you're planning to be competitive that season. If your coach has been around a while, this is probably his last shot. If he's new, he's been hired with the assumption that he and the owner both agreed that the team wasn't that far away. If they thought the team was not ready to make the leap in this year, you don't usually hear the word "reload." Instead you hear about putting in our systems and building the culture and yadda yadda yadda. As I thought about the Falcons, what I realized is that I hadn't followed them closely enough to have an educated opinion. I don't know why they improved under Quinn. They don't look to me like a reload because their improvement took two years. They only went from six wins to eight in Quinn's first year. But I guess I don't really have a good enough grasp of their situation. In any case, both those teams had more cap money than the Bills did, a better cap situation going forward and both those teams had a proven franchise QB. The Bills had some decent talent if you ignored QB, but the Bills core players that year, the ones who were traded or cut in the rebuild outside of Dareus (who was wildly overpaid and expensive, at $16 mill / year, not to mention unwilling to accept McDermott's rules) were mostly coming due to be re-signed. Re-signing the guys we jettisoned like Robert Woods, Watkins, Darby, Gilmore, Preston Brown and Tyrod Taylor, nearly all of whom we'd probably have needed if we expected to be competitive immediately, would have meant kicking more cans down more road and put us in cap hell sooner rather than later.

Great comparison. Brady = Allen? Pats OL = Bills OL? Please. They're a terrific team and we gave them a hell of a game on both sides of the ball. We're a young offense that hasn't played together much. Two starters from the offense last year, and the Pats have a ton of time in their scheme and have a lot. Play the game called "The Pats Did It, So If We Didn't, It's Daboll's Fault," and you'll come to the conclusion you want but that won't mean it's a conclusion that makes any sense. Very few teams play like the Pats. Their record will show that.

Trust the process has been around for many decades. McDermott hardly coined it. He is one of the first to use it so often in sports, so I guess that's something. But you're missing the point about wins. We rebuilt. It was a near-total rebuild, and when you do that fans should understand that you're going to suck for a while. McDermott has maximized each of the three rosters he's had. Managing five wins last year with that group was exceptional.

That's overstating it. But yeah, they're limited. But they're averaging 20.5 per game, so you're really overstating it. And yeah, it's been three straight weeks ... against the #1, #4 and #10 defenses. Creativity isn't the problem. It's personnel, and a lot of it is Josh Allen. He is improving but he's young and inexperienced and this shows. Hopefully his improvement will continue and be consistent. The OL is good but not good enough, partly because they're still gelling, and partly because they might be able to use an upgrade. The TE group is inexperienced or unexplosive. There are problems with this roster ... especially as they really are here a year early. The biggest problem is still Allen, though.

Ravens WR receptions chart: Marquise Brown 67 catches for 563 Willie Snead 28 catches for 317 Seth Roberts 31 for 248 Miles Boykin 19 catches for 190 So, no. And the Ravens were the first team I checked. Oh, wait, had a second thought and yeah, NE's third oftenest-used WR, after Dorsett and Edelman, is Meyers at 39%, almost exactly the same as McKenzie.Cleveland's was 39.0. The Chiefs use four WRs fairly often and their third WR was out there less than 50%. Indy only has one guy above 50% for the season. Their next two are both about 42%. Minnesota's 3rd guy, Thielen, is about 42.1% It's just not that unusual.

It's not a desperate need. It's surely something they could use, but they're no longer in the bottom ten of receiving corps. They've got a legit group. Could they use an upgrade? Sure, but it's not an emergency. Plenty of teams don't have three really threatening guys. With Knox as another option, they're not desperate anymore. I'd certainly expect them to address it this offseason, though. As for Foster, he's only appeared in 15.2% of their snaps. He hasn't done a ton, as he isn't out there all that much.

They worked as hard as they possibly could to win that game. Let's not work very hard ... not really something you'll hear much in someone who believes in "the process." They had a ton to win in that game, the division was still up for grabs. If they did have a top three, it probably looked something like this: 1) Win 2) See #1 3) No injuries Mission very much not accomplished, but it was good there didn't seem to be too many major injuries, though I haven't checked the reports yet, and don't know how Morse is feeling.

Don't see this at all. Not that that would be a bad thing, but teams with hammer backs have played the Pats this year and haven't done especially well. Any back will have problems when the blocking doesn't open holes.

Yeah. Just less painful than running into him with the legal hitting surface of the helmet if you are moving as you "come up from behind." Less likely to knock him to the ground as well.

Well, if the question is whether it is legal ... that's been asked and answered a dozen times in this thread. Yeah, it's legal. Again, the reason nobody does it is because punching delivers a lot less force than standard tackling form does. The first time it was pointed out that it was legal was in the OP. To refresh your memory, the tweet with the highlight says: "It is a perfectly legal play .. I can't believe Allen didn't fumble." Notice that nobody has been able to prove that it's not legal? That's because it's legal. It's just not very effective.

I guess we aren't going to come to any agreement on this because I think it's you that's totally wrong. I hear you that you're not arguing that they should have taken that option but only that it was viable. I disagree totally. I mean, of course it was theoretically possible to reload. But only theoretically. It was an option that was unstrategic, poor on the face of it. If you want to reload successfully, you need to have one of two things going for you. Either you should be only one or at most two players away, or you need to be in good cap shape. We simply weren't even close on either of these two. Reloads want to win, and soon. And unless you're either close or liquid, you won't win soon. The Bills were neither. I wasn't convinced either way on Watson. I tend towards doubt, though, on guys who aren't convincing in college as pocket passers, no matter how well they run, but I didn't think the Bills would go QB that year so I didn't spend much time on QBs. Certainly in hindsight, he should have been picked. But if teams had known he was as good as he is, he'd have been chosen earlier. I don't think for a second that the Texans expected him to be capable of playing right away at the level he proved capable of starting in Game 4. Not that he wouldn't start. But that they couldn't assume that he'd be as good as he immediately was. But they had a really good situation in Houston for him to come into: Hopkins, Fuller, Miller, Fedorowicz, a good running game and a really good nasty defense. The Texans were willing to sacrifice a year or two of winning football when they picked Watson, hoping he'd come around sooner, but willing to ride through some tough times if it came to that. If they'd been reloading, expecting to win soon, they'd have brought in a better backup than Yates or Savage. They were willing to go through QB growth even if it meant not contending for a year or two. They were neither reloading nor rebuilding; they were continuing along their path and bringing in a QB for the long haul. You brought up New Orleans as an example of cap hell. OK, if that's your definition, I agree the Bills weren't in hell. But they weren't all that far away either. And yeah, that situation in New Orleans was what happens if you're in poor cap shape, and decide to reload by kicking the cans down the road. You weren't in hell before but you are now. The Bills were already in poor cap shape. You suggest kicking a few contracts down the road, theoretically possible, but that's precisely how you end up in cap hell. The Saints had to endure suckage for a few years with Drew freaking Brees at QB because they kicked the cans down the road in a reload. I think you're dead on when you say that if they knew they liked Watson they could have picked him and still gone through a rebuild as they did. I'd have been thrilled at the rebuild and unconvinced but hopeful about Watson. But picking Watson and reloading ... with a team that simply wasn't good enough to have a cap situation so poor ... that was never a good idea.

Being wrong isn't that unusual or terrible. Being completely off the mark even with the benefit of hindsight ... now that takes some doing, but you manage it well here. Stunning wrongness. The starters on that team were not very impressive. The year before they were a 7-9 team and they lost a number of their better players. That roster looked poor then and even more so now. Vegas had them at six wins. Six. The fact that you thought that roster was a ten win squad at the time and still appear to think so is evidence of the fact that you were thinking poorly, then and now about it. And hell, there's evidence of that in your post. "Milano had an excellent rookie season." Yeah, but we're talking about before the season, not during it. Nobody thought he'd be good. Before the season he was a 5th round rookie with no expectations. He didn't even start till Week five, and only started that week and the last four of the season. He only played on 40% of snaps. Humber was the expected starter and played more than Milano. Preston Brown is a mediocre player, as he has shown. Seen his latest contract? One year, $805K. That's the kind of value teams put on Preston Brown. Dareus was no longer making plays beyond stopping a lot of runs. He was essentially Star Lotulelei, but on a $16 mill a year contract. His first four years, right up through 2014, he'd averaged seven sacks a year but since then nine sacks over 5 years. He was good at clogging up the middle but no longer had a second dimension as a pass rusher. It was Kyle Williams' last year and while he was still good, he'd lost a step and was no longer special. That DL scared nobody. Nobody expected Poyer and Hyde to become what they did gradually become. Both had been decent complimentary pieces in their previous teams. Yes, Lorax was coming off a 12.5 sack season, but in nine previous seasons he'd managed nine sacks total, one per year. That looked like the result of Ryan's scheme, and it was. There was no reason to think that McDermott's scheme, not blitz-based, would provide as many opportunities for Alexander as Ryan's blitz-based scheme. You were having to spin from instant one there, trying to defend a dumb and indefensible pre-season prediction with info that wasn't available preseason, like that Milano would have a much better year than you'd expect from a 5th rounder and that Poyer and Hyde would do better here than they ever had before. And after that you kept right on spinning. 'Cause it's spin to pretend that a DL starting Adolphus Washington was a very good one. The year before this was a seven-win team. And they lost guys from that team, losing both starting CBs, Gilmore and Darby, losing Watkins, Woods and Goodwin. This was a team reduced to starting Jordan Mills and Vlad Ducasse on the OL. Oh, and yeah, the Bills were the #1 running offense in the league that year. And the #30 passing offense. You can kid yourself that that was a good thing, but it wasn't. It averages out to mediocre and non-explosive. You keep going on about how leading the league in "running and big plays" means something. It didn't. It mostly meant they ran more than other teams because they knew they weren't a good passing offense. Regardless of running and big plays, they were the 16th ranked offense. That's not good. You keep trumpeting the "running and big plays" thing because it's the only good thing you can find. "Big plays," woo-hoo. Ten or more yards on a run is a "big play". It's a nonsense stat and the bottom line is that this was an offense that produced average yards and was lucky to have a bunch of short fields on turnovers Rex's D provided. The pass offense - QBs and WRs in particular - was a wasteland. When you start with Tyrod Taylor you're not going to have a decent passing attack. And then, you say about the passing game, "Tyrod and Co. did most of their damage in 2016 without those guys... "? Seriously, damage? In the passing game? BWAH HA HA HA HA!!! "Damage," oh, that's precious.Yeah, they damaged their way to the #30 passing game. And of that #30 passing game, the WRs managed 1925 yards, of which the three who left, Goodwin, Watkins and Woods, got 1474, around 75%. The rebuild and the need to get the cap in good shape and collect draft capital for a QB in 2017 meant about 75% of our productivity at WR had left with those three. That wasn't a "veteran team, ready to win." That was an older team with below-average talent that had lost some of their best players from the 7-9 year that went before. That roster was unimpressive. The fact you don't get that raises questions. Even back then everyone knew it, and that's why the Vegas line was six wins.

I'm not clear how you define hell. If it's extremely bad shape, then they were in hell. You suggest moving Tyrod and getting a QB by the draft. Those two could not be done together by a team that was reloading. Doing those would leave you without a functional QB for the year outside of some very cheap FA like Barkley or someone like him. Which a reloading team wouldn't do. Pick up a decent FA QB and you've spent the Tyrod savings and probably come up with a QB no better than Tyrod. Reloading didn't make sense.

IMO you're underestimating the situations in NE, PIT, CLE, LA and OAK. Maybe even Denver. Some of those teams don't look good if you're looking three or four years down the road, but for 2020 I think they all look solid. The four you mention are the young guys who at least right now look like they maybe have futures. But there are other ways to be happy about 2020 than having a guy under 25 years old.

Gotta say, I'm not astounded. The second year of a rebuild is supposed to suck. Now, not all rebuilds prove out. Far from it. But Beane and McDermott have made consistently smart decisions since they got here. Not that they've made correct decisions every time especially when looked at in hindsight, but they've been smart every time. Not astounded, but yeah, surprised it happened so early. Watching them, I thought more and more they were going to succeed, but that it would be the fourth year before they were this good.

Throwing a punch isn't an automatic ejection. It's an automatic rejection when not part of the play. If an OL punches a rusher in the chest, no problem. It's a (very very dumb) form of blocking (likely to lead to a broken hand and a DL who doesn't notice he's been hit). It's more dangerous to the puncher than the punched is the problem. Open-hand punches to the chest are standard blocking protocol. Again, punching a guy delivers much much less force than hitting him with standard tackling form. That's why standard tackling form is taught that way. Punch an RB and he'll run right through it. Plant a shoulder in the same place and he's down.

It wasn't nonsense, Bill. We were absolutely in bad cap shape. At the start of the league year, they had $18 mill in cap space before they released a bunch of guys on Mar. 6, 2017. $18 million. Is that how you want to look when you start a reload? How do you fill in the gaps necessary to win quickly in a reload? We got a bit more space when we cut a few guys, like Dan Carpenter and Robey-Coleman, but at that point we had $24 mill but only 44 guys under contract. We really were in poor cap shape, and at that time even if you looked ahead to the next year we were in the lowest group in the league in terms of cap remaining for 2018. For a team coming off a 7-9 season, a team with no franchise QB, that's very little money, particularly if you're thinking of reloading. Bad, bad shape. It's been reported that in his job interview McDermott told the Pegulas that that was the way to go, that he promised to get them in excellent cap shape by 2019. This was a major factor all along, right from minute one. I agreed with all those decisions you mentioned, including trading Watkins. I wanted them to try to keep Gilmore and Robert Woods. I liked Darby but thought it was simply good sense to clear out those guys to clear up cap space and bring in draft capital for a franchise guy.

We snuck into the playoffs. When you get in as a wild card with a 9-7 record, you're not getting in 'cause you're good. You're not good. You're lucky. That team - coached by McDermott by the way - edged in thanks to a bad AFC and an easy schedule. We then turned on the offensive jets and managed to rack up a massive three points in our playoff loss. That was not a good team. Everything I said in that post was correct.

This. He's run OK, but not great. As the year has gone on he appears to have lost a half a step but still hits holes hard. Ivory isn't playing, and there's probably a reason for that. Outside the building, fans tend to underestimate the effect of having a guy like Gore in the locker room. McDermott doesn't. It's why Gore's here at his age. Part of the reason this team is playing so well is that guys are buying in wholeheartedly to the process, to extreme preparation, to improving every day. But every coach in the league talks about those things. Players only respond fully to a small percentage of those coaches and situations. Gore is a part of this situation, a living example of good habits leading to a tremendous long career. He's far more valuable to McDermott than just being a running back. Again, fans don't care about that stuff because we're not in the locker room. We talk about it for 30 seconds and then start to talk about his running. But that's not how our coaches look at this.

And yet more nonsense. Tre White and Josh Allen could easily turn out to be a better combo than the singleton Mahomes, particularly without a year to sit behind Alex Smith while Andy Reid whispered in his ear. A lot has to play out right long term ... either way. When KC gets a Lombardi doesn't matter. It only matters that the Bills become consistently competitive for a championship. As McDermott has pointed out several times, he had too much to do laying the groundwork for getting this team headed in the right direction. Which we now see he did extremely well. He's said he didn't have time to scout QBs as thoroughly as he needed to take a chance on one that year. And he had Whaley as his GM, a guy who'd been all in on the EJ Manuel decision, certainly not a guy you would trust to pick your QB if he did trust him, and he clearly didn't as we discovered the day after the draft.

Good point. Nice observation.