Thurman#1

One of you said he was going to be fighting for league MVP this year, didn't he? Granted it seemed absolutely unhinged from minute one, but some of you that really get behind him really have said some quite nutty things. For those that haven't, fair enough.

9-3. But again, that is simply not a Josh Allen stat. It is a Buffalo Bills stat. It has an awful lot to do with how terrifically our defense is playing.

As many have pointed out, this is very much not true. To put it in perspective ... Allen is tied for 16th in the league in throwing TDs. Which is far from bad. Wilson tied for 9th as a rookie and 9th again as a soph. Those are absolutely not similar numbers, in terms of rankings or gross numbers. And those TD numbers came on 383 attempts as a rookie and 407 attempts the next for Wilson, while Allen has already thrown 366 passes. Allen has thrown a TD on 3.1% of his passes last year and 4.4% this year, while Wilson racked up TDs on 6.6% of his throws as a rook and 6.4% the next year. Josh is improving, and the outlook is pretty solid right now. But he certainly hasn't produced similar passing TDs numbers with Wilson's first two seasons.

"Bad" is seriously overstating it, even back when you posted this on 11/20. For a second-year guy, his stats have been OK. Probably better than that, in that they're trending upwards. He's 21st in passer rating among guys with 100 or more throws, and that just is not bad at all for a second-year man. And it's higher than that for nearly any stretch of games after the (admittedly awful) NE game. If there were indications that he'd reached his ceiling, it would be bad news. But results show just the opposite, that he trended up year on year and he's continued to do so through the course of this year. And ask Dallas, Denver or Miami if running is the only dangerous thing he does. They'll disagree. Teams started the year packing the box and daring Allen to beat them. Lately, he's done a good enough job of being productive in those situations that he's making game-planning much tougher on opposing DCs.

Every four games have star potential, really. Or maybe more like "the very first little fragment of a star being born" potential, anyway. Allen has to play well. Same as always. Maybe more people will become aware of it if more are watching. Bottom line, though, is that it takes consistency over a long period of time to become a star. Remember how Derek Carr was a star and then wasn't. Remember how Matt Schaub was a star and then wasn't. Neither did it for long enough or consistently enough. Four games is an eyeblink in a football career. It might be when people notice progress but that's only a big deal to people desperate to be noticed. Oh, and free agents will come here for the same reason 95% of those decisions are made ... money.

Man, are you guys sensitive! He's responding to this: "Hey Bill do you care to comment on Josh Allen absolutely demolishing teams or nah?" His response was very reasonable, and included "Josh played great today ..." He's right. Josh has had three very fine games, but teams will adjust and he'll have to adjust right back. Will he? The odds seem to be getting better, but it's still far too early to say for sure. And the people who said that QBR is a questionable metric are very correct, but he's also 23rd in passer rating a better metric. It's not a bad snapshot of how he's done over the season. But trending way up the last three games. Have to love that.

No particular reason to think we cut Star. He's not popular here on the boards, but he's very very popular at OBD. He's doing the job they want him doing, the job they signed him and valued his contract so high for. Would they cut him if they find someone who can do the job better and cheaper? Sure, same with everyone else on the team. But Star is getting the dirty job of space-eating done. He's part of the reason the LBs run free, part of a defense that's back nuzzling at the bubble of being elite.

Was that team torn down, when they made the playoffs five of the last six years and will certainly make it six out of seven this year? More, you can pretend that the Seahawks roster turnover was all about money, but that's what you'd be doing ... pretending. That team was riven by internal tensions. The defense essentially revolted, forcing them to get rid of many of their best players. Would they have had to get rid of some anyway, because of money issues? Yeah. But was some of that turnover performance-based and based on guys considering themselves above the team, guys like Sherman thinking he was smarter and more integral to the team than Carroll, forcing them to get rid of him? Yeah, it absolutely was. Yes, cap concerns were part of it. But only a part. No, you can't keep everyone. But yes, there are a core of guys, somewhere between maybe nine and twelve depending, that you can aim to keep, and yes that allows you to be successful over the long term if you're good at drafting, cap management and player acquisition generally. That's how teams like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, the Putz, the Pack, the Saints, the Seahawks and a few more stay competitive for a long time even if they have a bad year or two scattered here and there. Oh, and the Seahawks were a QB-driven team from the minute they made Russell Wilson the starter, even if many on the roster didn't fully understand that. Take him out, and they don't make those two Super Bowls. The Bills might be in a temporary sweet spot. Or not. Has NE's sweet spot been temporary? Seattle's? Pittsburgh's? And whether or not you are willing to call it a development year doesn't change the fact that it is one. This is a very very young team with a very very young QB. Top five, to me. Maybe top three or four. Not so much for the state of the cap, though, IMO. That's what the cap tends to look like this early in a (financially conservative, intelligently run) rebuild. But for putting together a roster that looks like it will be very competitive very soon. For drafting Allen, who is proceeding a bit ahead of schedule. For drafting Oliver w/out trading up, for drafting Singletary, and for suffering through the rebuild w/out bowing to the fans constant calls to sacrifice long-term success for (expensive) short-term gains.

9-3 is pretty great. Have there been more than a very few examples of negativity since they reached that record? There are always a few trolls and a few nuts but these last three games he has looked very nice indeed, and Bills fans are aware of it. Most posts that might get called negative aren't so much negative about Allen as they are negative about the nuts who feel he's already clearly better than Brady and Brees and the rest, the people who don't feel happy unless they're being wildly, unrealistically and loudly overoptimistic.

Pretty wrong. There's some ups and downs every year but there are plenty of teams that are consistently good, without Tom Brady. Their goal is to be competitive every year. They've gone towards that goal intelligently, without letting short-term concerns hijack their long-term aims. If Josh Allen turns out to be a top ten to twelve guy, he won't have to be a Tom Brady. He could make this team just what they intended it to be.

I'll worry about that after we beat the Ravens and the Pats. Which is quite unlikely. Love how we're playing, though.

Not interested. Last thing they need are huge numbers of distractions.

He's not "discrediting" Ford. He's saying that people assuming that he'd been solely responsible for holding Miller out by himself were giving him too much credit. And there absolutely were people assuming that. He's saying that some credit goes to double-teams, chip blocks and plays designed to get the ball out quickly being run as designed by Allen. He's totally agreeing with your last sentence, saying that people giving no credit for other players and for good game plans and giving all the credit to Ford were missing a lot of the reason that Miller didn't get home against Ford.

I've been reading for the same length of time. And I totally disagree. Yeah, they wrote a lot more critical stuff after the Super Bowl era. But that had an awful lot to do with the fact that the team was pretty poor. The best years were mediocre. When the team is poor, reporters should report that. This has been a poor team for a long long time. When we've had our occasional flashes, the reporters have been effusive. I'll always remember Sully saying six games in during the Trent Edwards 2008 campaign that Gailey should be among the faves for coach of the year thus far. And Joe wasn't bitching. He's reporting his findings from watching the All-22. That's his job. I'd argue the one bitching here is you.

No, you don't have to be a roofer to "say that the guys roofing the neighbor's house are half-assing the flashing and using safety lines in a manner they shouldn't be used." But that's not what was being said. What you're doing there is a very specific critique, and your hypothetical guy is actually watching the roofers work. Do you have anybody here who was watching Joe do the work? Is the critique specific? Your analogy doesn't hold up. The critiques were wildly general, come from zero watching of Joe work and are critiquing not the methods but the guy and the conclusions. As for the relentless attacks being weak, did he say the attacks were strong, or did he say they were relentless? Relentless means they never stop, and as I follow both Joe's work and the responses, I'd argue that's true pretty much whenever Joe writes something that's below the unrealistically positive opinions most Bills fans want to hear about the Bills. You leave out the fact that the guy who told him to enjoy the win crammed two irreligious references in his two-line post. And while Sully is a fine reporter, the people who refuse to hear anything negative about the Bills think Sully is wildly unfair to the Bills. And the guy pointing out that he's criticizing Ford for good results that came from play design is throwing up a straw man argument. Joe pointed out that there was no bad result of the play. Does the fact that the ball came out before a defender got there mean that ineffective blocking on the play is OK? It shouldn't, for anyone with a neutral attitude. Of course these are all attacks.

The play before the ball was caught on the 30 and falls forward to the 28. There was a 15 yard penalty against the Pats for roughing the passer. So that first down the spot should have been from the 13, or just behind it if they figured his knee hit before the ball got all the way to the 28. It's not clear where the markers on the other side actually were, but they should have been on the 13. This is an absolute nothing.

Yup. Not to mention that to rig things would take a ton of people to be involved, which would then be guaranteed to be exposed. If you've got a golden goose, the one thing you don't do is kill it, or even make it seriously ill, which is what a fixing scandal with a basis would do. There's little reason for them to do it and their self-interest lies directly opposed to doing this. The idea is desperately ridiculous.

The part of his footwork there is concern about isn't his dropbacks, IMO. It's his footwork as he steps into his throws. He's been improving but still has problems sometimes. I don't think the dropbacks factor in.

Star has done well, he's been a good pickup, consistently doing what he was signed for, eating double-teams and creating lanes for the LBs to run to the ball. Murphy has been OK, but was signed with the hopes that he'd get maybe 7 or 8 sacks a year. He hasn't lived up to that. He's been decent, but he's not really living up to his contract.

Me, I doubt it will have anything at all to do with Murphy's contract, and everything to do with Lawson's perceived market value. "We've got the cash" is a terrible argument, in pretty much any financial question. The guy who makes decisions based on whether or not he has the cash ... soon won't. And it's not how they run this team. Thank goodness. This is a fiscally conservative group, which is how the best teams operate. They're going to try to make sure they have the cash every year, by husbanding and using it carefully and conservatively. Look at how the Panthers work. And as for "the top teams," that do end up "signing the big name FA 'weapons'" for rushing the passer? How many of the teams that are consistently competitive (which is our FO's stated goal) have done that? The Pats? Ravens? Steelers? Pack? Saints? Seahawks? How many have gotten their best pass rushers by paying out the nose for him in FA? Any of them? Not the Seahawks. They traded for Clowney and got him for cheap for one year. They might then re-sign him, if he fits, but they didn't give him the huge contract without having had him on the roster.

It'll depend on what Shaq can get. He might easily want more than we would be willing to give. Murphy is doing a decent job, but not living up to his contract. Best guess is he's probably gone. They can save $5.95 mill by cutting him. Yeah, a low- to mid-priced UFA or even two and maybe a draft pick or two seems a very likely guess.

Questioning his breakdown chops is fair ... if you're then going back and doing your own breakdowns. But that's not what is happening here. People disagree with the message so they're saying that the messenger must suck. These are all people who didn't like the message responding angrily: Had Joe said it wasn't supposed to work that way? All within the first 11 replies. There were also some very reasonable replies on both sides, but Joe always gets criticisms, and they always come when he said something not wildly sycophantic about a Bills player. And that Eric Wood interview you mentioned I always considered a classic, because he went over several plays that he said fans wouldn't understand and I went back and found I'd gone through parts of the film on various research projects. I hadn't analyzed all the plays, but I believe I had looked at two out of three and had correctly understood both of them before I saw the interview. And I'm no football genius. It isn't as tough as many believe to break this stuff down. It's certainly not possible on all plays but on a very high percentage it's really pretty easy ... if you're willing to put in the time to look at it over and over again. That's the tough part. And it's why I got really into All-22 study for a while and have since done way less. It just takes so much time.

This exactly. And it's not surprising that Gaughan comes up with much the same conclusions. https://buffalonews.com/2019/11/26/buffalo-bills-dion-dawkins-quinton-spain-offensive-line-denver-broncos-analysis-von-miller-nfl-grades-2019/?utm_medium=more_stories "The offensive line leads this week’s position-by-position grading of the Bills, based on video review and on a scale of 0 to 5: "Offensive line (4.5): Miller played 47 snaps off right tackle and 11 off left tackle. Rookie Cody Ford had to solo block Miller 10 times and gave up only one hurry. Eight other times Ford got help from a back, a tight end or guard Spencer Long. On a third-down conversion pass for 12 yards, Ford had perfect balance against Miller. Ditto for the TD pass to Cole Beasley. Ford allowed only one hurry. Dawkins allowed a sack to Miller (aided by a blitz) but yielded only one other hurry. "In the run game, Spain showed off his power. He blocked Reed on a 27-yard run by Frank Gore. He sealed off tough nose tackle Mike Purcell a couple times. He picked up blitzing A.J. Johnson on the TD pass to John Brown. He walled off Adam Gotsis on several clock-killing runs. It was an A-plus day for Spain. Props to Jon Feliciano for playing stout and glitch-free over the last 64 snaps at center in place of Mitch Morse." Good, but had a lot of help. As you say, nothing at all wrong with that. But it's very much worth noting. And pointing it out isn't some kind of anti-Bills act.

Yup. In Cribbs' rookie year, NFL teams averaged 30.5 fumbles per season. Whereas last year, teams averaged around 19.75 fumbles per season. Those were different times. Defenders were allowed to do pretty much everything not involving automatic weapons.

Who recovers fumbles is just luck. Cribbs was just unlucky in terms of recoveries. As for fumbling, it can be a good play by the defense or a bad play by the RB or both. Cribbs had a ton of fumbles his first two years (16 and 12). After that, he cleaned it up.