Thurman#1

I'm high on this group. They're smart and they have a smart plan. It'll still depend on Josh Allen, though. I'm not nearly high enough at this point to be thinking about the 1990 offseason. That was one terrific team and Kelly was showing real mastery. But I really do like the direction they're headed and the consistency of their progress in that direction.

I don't think they saw him as purely an RT prospect. They seem to have thought he might (or might not) need to be switched from early on, though clearly they have hoped and are still hoping he will develop his footwork and make the grade at tackle. As for not converting guys after a year, sometimes it works just fine. Off the top of my head, I believe Geoff Schwartz was switched T to G after a year or so, and that's worked out fine. Some guys you do and some guys you don't.

I was ready to totally disagree, but you at least edged me over towards the "possibly" area. I've never thought he wanted to change. If he actually does, I guess maybe. Many here say he's never been a process guy, and I would disagree with that, though it's definitional. Certainly his fines and penalties aren't the kind of guy they've ever wanted. But in terms of how hard he works and how good he is in the locker room, how football smart he is, yeah, he has always seemed to me like a process guy, though a wasted one I never wanted on my team. If he has actually changed, maybe. I doubt it would happen and I don't think I want it either, nor am I sure he fits this defense. But at least I can imagine it now. Yeah, this is a question I have. Don't remember if he can cover, but he might not even fit this defense. Might not even be worth asking the question. McDermott does want very athletic guys.

Not for Newton it's not. But yes, for the whole team it's a massive massive problem. Wins and losses isn't a QB stat, it's a team stat. The concern for Newton is how well Newton himself played in those games. And it's really hard to figure how one guy is playing sometimes in the middle of a tire fire. But in a quick and cursory look at his last eleven games it sure looks like in his last five he's been pretty bad and the six before that he was terrific. What that says, I don't know. I think keeping him or dumping him are both pretty defensible at this point.

We should get a slight discount if we do it during the offseason, to remove some risk from him and to get him money earlier. But basically yeah, absolutely.

GMs have much larger staffs working on all this than the guys doing mocks do. The team doctors get to directly examine the prospects, that's a huge advantage. Generally the more decisions are crowd-sourced the better they're likely to be. Journalists have much less of a chance to do much of this, and if they do they'd likely get closer together as they got better, and readers will start criticizing. And in terms of process, not the preparation for the draft, but the draft itself, the GMs have it much much easier in maybe the most important way ... the guy drafting 22nd will know absolutely for sure which 21 guys he can't pick. While the mock makers are only guessing. They have to do all seven rounds before the first pick is made, so your mocker might predict the Bills going with a guy who was picked 17th, say. Plus the GMs have a much more focused task ... maximize the talent their team gets out of it in a way that maximizes team performance. The mock community has to as well as possible simulate every pick, an absolutely impossible task. This is a pretty huge advantage. IMO another advantage they have is a much greater knowledge of the coaches and staff's opinions of their own players ... how smart those players are, how well they fit the system, etc. Guys doing mocks are guessing ... educatedly, but they're guessing. The GMs know what kind of guys the coaches are looking for, how much improvement a player is making, who's understanding their own assignments and helping out others, who works like a dog ... all that stuff. Which gives them a major advantage in knowing what is needed, what is not, and what kinds of solutions would be best to fill those needs in the coaches' opinions. Having said that, it's absolutely clear that word gets out in the last week or so about what teams want and like. Some of it's smoke certainly, but a surprising amount is not. The community figures some things out as they better get to know the GMs, and as they hear from the janitors who clean the rooms war rooms, or the owner or the assistant defensive line coach can't help but talk to his chatty girlfriend, or whatever. Predictions do get closer the last few days or so. Word gets out. But not everything, and yeah, plenty of smoke too. But after the draft it comes out, especially as the NFL releases those little war room dramatic videos as they've done the last few years or the Peter Kings of the world do a story where they tell about the war room they were embedded in, or whatever. And that's not even mentioning stuff we never used to know like how many coaches visit guys ... like the number of Bills coaches who went to Lenoir-Rhyne which has pretty much only Dugger as a major pro prospect. Or who the Bills get in for their facility visits. People have a surprisingly decent grasp on what's going on. Far from perfect, though. There'll always be lies and misdirections, and when you have to do all your guessing before the first guy is even picked, you have a poorer chance the later the pick.

Looming FAs, yeah. FAs that are very unlikely to be FAs, less so. Do you really think Jerry Jones, a guy in love with the concept of triplets, is going to let his be broken up? If so, I guess we can agree to disagree, but Amari Cooper's free agency is less looming than barely perceptible except among dreamers, IMO. Hey, it'd be fascinating if it happened, but what's the likelihood? And I was and am correct about the cap savings. It will never make sense to first add and then subtract the dead cap money. Doing so completely eliminates dead cap as a factor. And that doesn't make any sense. Dead cap absolutely is a factor when you're calculating the total cap impact of cutting a guy. I totally get that what I'm saying is counter-intuitive. On the surface of it, it seems wrong. But when you look at it in a deep and detailed way, it's correct. Haven't had time to get back to that in a week as I do my student grades, but I will get back to it. Sorry, I really shouldn't hijack the thread. I won't comment more on this here. And I do appreciate your tone here, Bandit, very reasonable, even if I disagree. I hope mine here had the same feeling to it.

Whether we boards folk would take him is beside the point. McDermott has made plain his feelings about the guy by cutting him when he was still easily one of the better players on the team and at a time when cutting him was financially punitive.

Here's an idea ... why don't we wait till Dallas says or indicates Cooper will reach free agency before we start stuff like this? Because there's probably in the neighborhood of a 5 -20% chance he isn't with the Cowboys next year.

Yeah, people forget about Kevin Johnson. I could see him making a bit of decent money, possibly here. I'd guess you might be wrong about Jordan Phillips. I think he's going to be overpaid by someone with stars in their eyes. We'll see.

Tom Brady. Our own Kurt Coleman. James Conner. Aaron Jones. Marion Mack. Juszczyk. Mike Daniels. Dak. Jonnu Smith, Enumwa, Glowinski, Elandon Roberts, Pernell McPhee. Not to mention you can trade 'em.

Nothing to get upset about. Yeah, comp picks are very important, and the good teams over the long term work towards earning them. But last year we had very few FAs we let go, having just rebuilt and gotten rid of most of the guys reaching the end of contract signed during the Whaley years. And we brought in a bunch of FAs, having had a ton of cap money and a lot of holes to fill on the OL and at WR and a few more spots besides. They know comp picks are important, they've made it clear. As they start having more of the guys they signed reach the end of contracts, we should start to see this be something to look towards.

You still talking about the mistake I made in the other thread? Dude, you can't bother me a bit with that. If there's one thing about me, it's that if I make a mistake, I acknowledge it, long and loud. Go back to the thread, you'll see I already admitted I was wrong. And I was wrong. Badly. Having said that, is it so important to you that you're pursuing it to another thread? That's kinda sad, to be honest. You never made a mistake? But I should end the post again saying that I made a mistake. Must've been totally exhausted to be that stupid.

My guess is two, but I could see three if they have a good opportunity. They have Smoke, and he's likely somewhere around 22nd best in the league give or take three or four. Certainly not elite, but he's clearly a #1. If they can get someone even better, that'd be great, but what they really need is someone who's genuinely good, a strongish #2 to take reps away from our guys like McKenzie and Foster. A second guy who's an upgrade from last year's third and fourth guys would serve as depth and allow them to use four WRs in various situations. If they got three, a reasonable guess on how they'd do that would be a mid-priced FA somewhere in the Beasley-Brown pay level, a guy from the first two days of the draft and a guy from somewhere around round 5. And that guy isn't likely to immediately be significantly better than McKenzie et al. As has been said many times, it's be nice if they could get at least one of the top two guys to have a skillset we don't have so much of on this team, a contested catch specialist, a strong guy for over the middle work or a second speed guy to work opposite Brown.

Pretty poor paraphrase there. The best way to put together the best team is to use your draft picks sensibly and for value and to not fall in love with one guy and trade far too much to get him. But in this particular draft, yeah, getting a third-round game-breaking WR could very very easily be possible. It's that kind of year. And as Beane has correctly said, we are NOT one player away. And it's not just opinion that that's not the way to run the draft. The studies back him up. https://www.vox.com/2014/5/7/5683448/how-nfl-teams-ignore-basic-economics-and-draft-players-irrationally https://www.nber.org/papers/w11270 https://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/dont-trade-up-in-the-nfl-draft/

The minute you say, "do whatever it takes," whatever you're arguing for takes a hit. Be great to get a vintage Corvette. But if it took killing a guy and paying four times the normal price, it's not worth it. If he's available at #22 and they like him, that would be great. If they want to skip up a spot or three and it doesn't cost too much, again great. But there are too many really good receivers in this draft to do something silly like give up a lot of value. Hmm? He said the other trades were 2nd round or below. That includes the Edmunds trade. Baltimore gave up 16th and 54th and Buffalo gave up 22nd and 65 (a 3rd rounder). He's correct. And his point stands. The Allen trade is the one where they really gave up serious value. The Edmunds trade, done with the leftovers of the prep they did to bring in draft capital for the Allen trade, was second and below that there's another fairly significant drop. Beane seems willing to give up picks, but he's pretty stingy with picks from the first couple of days.

One guy in the league managed more than 20 carries per game, Derrick Henry at 20.2. Below him, four guys got between 18.8 and 18.5, Elliott, Chubb, Jacobs and Carson, and #6 is at 17.9. Sixteen guys had more than 15 carries per game, The Titans averaged 27.8 carries per game as a team, the Cowboys 28.1, the Browns 24.6, which meant Chubb got more than 75% of their carries, the highest of the ones I quickly checked. And you generally don't want to use the Browns as your model. If you go back to, say, 1985, six guys had over 20 carries, Gerald Riggs (24.8), Marcus Allen (23.8), James Wilder (22.8), Freeman McNeil (21.0), Eric Dickerson (20.9) and Walter Payton (20.2). So things have changed, but the trends go up and down over the years.

Come on, Singletary's fast. But you're right that he's not a 4.4 kind of guy, not a guy nobody can catch. Speed isn't his most outstanding trait, that would be shiftiness. We need another back and he has to be effective. That's really what we actually need. As for what would be the frosting on the cake, I personally would like to see a power back, to show teams a contrast of styles. But in terms of actual needs, we need another effective back to spell Singletary.

Damn, man, you're right, I'm wrong. Sorry. Must have been too tired when I wrote that. Because it was just a stupid mistake. When I make them, I like to own up, and that was a genuinely stupid mistake on my part. Thanks for the correction. Having said that, you're right about the leverage in '83, but any QB as good as Burrows is has leverage ... if he wants to use it. Burrows may or may not.

You could tell him that he's absolutely correct, or that more specifically he's an above-average space-eater. You could tell him there's a reason that the brain trust paid him that money and doubled down on keeping him longer, and that the reason is that he consistently does what the coaches want and need him to do. You could also tell him that there seem to be a group of fans who don't like him but that they don't seem to get that what they feel is beside the point, that it's the coaches and the front office and what they feel that matters, not some group of fans with a weird grudge. Snacks is also an above-average 1-tech. At his peak he was among the very best space-eaters in the game. He no longer seems to be at his peak, unfortunately. I've always loved how he plays.

Throwing off balance is precisely a footwork problem, in many cases. Not if you're knocked off-balance obviously, but a lot of times the reason you're off balance is that you didn't use your feet correctly. Footwork is important in crowded pockets, and there's a specific type of footwork that's best for throwing on the run. It's an issue. It doesn't solve everything by any means, but it helps. On the other hand, some guys can't change things, their bad or good habits are too deeply ingrained. It's worth looking at, though. For what it's worth, AVP is a smart cookie and if Mayfield will listen, he's likely to learn something. Sigh. Back to grading student papers. Shouldn't even have written this.

I know!! Next thing people will start saying you should look both ways before you cross the street! Or that you have to look at all the consequences of major actions!! It's crazy the things people will say. As far as Diggs specifically, I'd consider it. I'd have to know a lot more. If he's angry with them for only getting him 1190 yards last year he might not be a good fit here.

There was no Philip Rivers the year Elway came out either. The next QB picked was Ken O'Brien at #24. And yeah, Elway had the theoretical chance of going to baseball instead but he was never likely to do that. These guys can take a year off and try again. It's not total control by any means, but it's leverage. EDIT: Sorry, I must have been out-of-my-mind exhausted when I wrote this. Genuinely dumb mistake on my part. There absolutely were options between Elway and O'Brien, and much better options. Having said that, despite my stupid mistake here, Burrows absolutely does have leverage here if he wants to use it. He may or may not.

Fair enough. When you get your own team that preference should come into play at some point. Including the thought that those would be the only two options.

Hunh. What a surprise that you only argue the one I said I'm not interested in arguing. Again, if you want want to argue whether they have to do anything, go argue with someone who gives a *****. And how funny that your whole big dumb argument about how there was no way they would ever re-sign Edmunds, the part I argued, has now disappeared. Replaced by a line or two about the fact that Edmunds isn't yet on Kuechly's level, which I wouldn't argue. He's not, yet. But Edmunds is a very very good player, particularly for his second year, and he is absolutely crucial to their plans for this defense, just as Kuechly was then. They could very easily decide to extend him after his third year. Typical, though, of someone losing an argument. Abandon the losing part, never mention it again, and change the grounds of what you're arguing on and distract distract distract.