Thurman#1

Nerds? Yeah, maybe. But nerds whose product is purchased by a large majority of NFL teams? Definitely. People hate PFF when they say things they don't like. It's a shoot the messenger deal. But though nobody's right all the time and that certainly goes for PFF as well, they do a damn good job. If they didn't, teams wouldn't buy their stuff. Again, doesn't mean they're right in any given case, and certainly so on something as opinion-based and small sample-based as this. But they're a smart group doing a good job. And since they never said that Hodges will be a better QB than Allen down the road, instead only saying that right now he's playing better, that's a defensible argument they're making.

As you should. I'll send you my PayPal account and you can send some cash for being right. The reason it's standard is that it's correct. If there's one thing history shows it's that people aren't good at keeping secrets, most particularly when book contracts beckon. The only conspiracies that work are tiny ones. (With the exception of large patriotically-based secrets like the Enigma machine or the code-talkers. People will shut up in large numbers for the good of their country. But to steal money and undermine the honesty of a sport? Please!! It would already be out.) The ones that have tons of people working away on them and still stay secret ... are imaginary, and that makes the conspiracy nuts come a-running.

Hodges TD % this season : 5.0% of his throws are TDs JA TD % this season: 4.2% of his throws are TDs And again, given a guess at the better future, I and nearly everyone else would take Josh. But the question PFF raises is who is playing better right now. I think it's very fair to argue that that's Hodges. He's really doing a good job.

The point isn't how many yards a game he's getting. It's how he does when he passes. And he's done very well. Of course he's playing caretaker football. That's what you play when your team isn't behind and you've got a QB who has no experience. Yeah, he's not getting a lot of yards per game but that's because he's not throwing a lot. You can't judge a guy based on passes he's not asked to throw. You can't say, "See, they're running. That shows the QB sucks." It doesn't. When they ask him to throw, he's doing it productively. And you're scraping with the "in two of his games he's thrown as many TDs as INTs" thing. He's also in two games thrown an infinitely larger percentage of TDs than INTs. Both stats are spin. You look at the totals. Twice as many TDs as INTs. Oh, and your loyalties are showing when you call Baltimore, the Chargers, Cincy, Cleveland and Arizona "some of the worst teams in the NFL." Cincy, yeah, but the others not so much, really. The Cards have been surprisingly competitive against a very tough schedule. And by the way, Allen has also played against a pretty weak schedule. Young? Inexperienced? Maybe a flash in the pan? Yeah, sure, fair enough. But he's playing well.

Seriously? Man, that is a bad take. He's third in the league in yards per kickoff return, and 9th on punts. He's dangerous and he's having a good year for us. Apparently so. No other reason for its existence.

Why is this so shocking? Hodges is playing great. High completion percentage, high YPA, he's playing very well indeed. That's one guess. It may well be correct re: Hodges after people get a read on him, but we're not really sure what we have with Allen yet, and since we've seen him play worse, this isn't Allen's floor. If I had to pick one of them for the future I'd absolutely pick Josh, but right now it's fair to say that Hodges is playing better, IMO, though I haven't watched all of his throws.

... as absolutely anyone with any sense would. There's essentially one and only one way to keep a conspiracy from becoming known. Keep it to an extremely small group of people. When a lot of people know, it will come out sooner or later. And to have the refs trying to affect games would mean the knowledge of, what?, 50 people? All those different crews? We'd already know.

I do love Beane and McDermott. Both smart guys who play the odds, understand best practice and use it, and have a smart vision and a path to get there. And not only that but they're on the same page. Man, is that a good thing. It's been probably 18 years since I predicted a Bills win against the Pats. They've simply been a much much better team for a very long time, and that's not even getting into the cheating. But they have a legit shot in Foxboro this time. Last ten years i"ve given 'em a roughly 10% chance in any given Pats game. Right now I give them closer to 30 - 35%. Part of that is that the Bills are absolutely improved, at their highest efficiency since probably 2004. But the Pats have at the same time gotten a lot worse. This isn't the same Pats team. They've benefitted as much as we have from an easy schedule. That Texans game just didn't look like the Pats we've come to know, and it's about time. They're still a good team, but that offense is nowhere near what it used to be.

Nice selfie, dude. In the meantime, appears everyone's still guessing at what he's talking about. If someone wants to have a conversation with any depth, he need to tell people what he's talking about. And if you're talking about a story, that means a link.

If those are your definitions, he's neither. Half and half, maybe. He started out more of a thrower, but certainly not mostly "thowing strikes," out of college. He was off-target far more than usual. In terms of velocity, yeah, he's got the capabilities of steaming it in on any play. Now he's significantly improved his accuracy, and we do see plenty of short to mid-range balls that aren't frozen ropes. He's changed, become less of a frozen rope thrower and throws more strikes. He's getting touch. But yeah, he still needs to work on mechanics, poise, reading defenses and basically an awful lot of stuff, some of which comes from bad habits or knowledge voids, but an awful lot of which is simply stuff that second-year guys have to learn And plenty of throwers gain enough touch that they're essentially passers a few years in. As someone mentioned above, Elway's a great example of that.

You mentioned CBS Sports. Are they predicting this? Wondering if it could happen? Got a link?

Dorsey's got one year as a QB coach. Daboll's got one year as a winning OC. Frazier's got three years as a terrific DC on top of a long and successful career before that. But people suspect that the defense is McDermott's and they're clearly partly right. I don't think the odds are great that anybody gets poached this year, at least not to go to a plum position that's an obvious move up. Could happen, though, certainly. I feel like Frazier's the guy who would be the best pick for another team, and maybe Daboll is the most likely to be grabbed if it happens. Most ready, maybe, but not ready, IMO. One year in charge of a successful NFL offense, assuming you find this offense successful. I know Daboll's been mentioned for a position but I don't buy it, and the mention wasn't specific that the reporter had great sources and Daboll's name came from one of them.

You know, you said in the first paragraph there that you understood that the play-calling might have been different. And yet you make it clear in the second that you didn't understand it at all. The Bills got the ball back with 5:27 left. The drive ended with 1:07 on the clock. That's because they ran it a bunch. Not one guy ran out of bounds that drive. They weren't hurrying, as if they did score that TD and tie it up, the last thing they wanted was to leave the Ravens a bunch of time to get down the field. They didn't need to hurry, hell, they didn't want to hurry. But of course, if they'd missed that conversion, they would have hurried it up an awful lot, they'd have run a two-minute drill. If they'd scored, the Ravens might easily have gotten the ball back with three and a half or four minutes left. The Bills could very easily have had a third possession if they had known early that they needed one. They got a tactical advantage knowing how many points they needed. It wasn't enough, unfortunately, but it was the smart play.

He's mildly irritated because your argument is dumb. If you do not convert, you need an extra possession. However, this is true whenever you miss the conversion, early or late. Same deal. It's like knowing you're going to have to flip a coin at some point and worrying whether you should do it earlier or later. Doesn't matter. Either way you win the flip and you're golden, you lose the flip and you need an extra possession. Knowing earlier the details of your situation allows you to call plays and use strategy better and more specifically. More so when they thought they knew what look they were going to get. And yeah you don't always go with analytics if the human factor in that moment calls for something else. But going with the analytics most of the time is simply smart. The best organizations do it.

Having 12 guys in the huddle is a major tactical advantage for that team. Which is why it's a penalty in the first place. Which guy will leave? Depending which guy leaves, the opponent might want a different personnel package in. Any coach would have been angry about that, regardless of how much it showed in his face.

Don't know if anyone answered this yet. In case they didn't, it's around 18:45. He said there was some jawing from some Ravens, he'd heard (not seen) and wasn't even sure it was McDermott who was involved.

Since when is till 1:00 a.m. "all night long" that close to New York City. It was indeed a stupid thing to do, but it was hardly all night long. The New York City media strikes again.

No, Lamar didn't complete any, but he didn't have the opportunities to hit a deep ball that Josh did. It's important. Enough with the spin, it matters. Complete a deep ball or two and the whole defense will loosen up underneath, not to mention you having either scored a TD or made a huge gain of yardage. It matters. Have conditions been bad every single game this year? Having said that, he's improved, and as young as he is he could still address this, but it does need to happen.

Nah. Best player at a position of need. Offense or defense ... best guy. The good ones need to eliminate the serious weaknesses in their game. That's what defenses look for and can scheme around.

They will have room. But they don't have the tendency. Build through the draft and fill in the gaps with low- to medium-priced FAs is what they want to do and what the teams that win consistently in the NFL do. More, "they have room" is the worst argument around. It's like the guy who says, "Why don't we buy it? We have the money." The one thing you know about him is that very soon, he won't.

First, he hasn't overcome it yet. It looks increasingly like he will, but the results aren't in yet. Second, it wasn't a particularly bad situation if it only lasts a year or so. Most QBs picked early in the first have worse situations, as they're mostly being picked by crappy teams with bad management. We appear to have good management, at long last. Third, the person who put the Bills in a bad situation was Doug Whaley by putting us in cap hell while only assembling a mediocre roster with no franchise QB. Beane and McDermott have maximized Allen so far. They've done a great job, and that's why he's got pretty good offensive talent around him in his second year and a terrific defense meaning the offense doesn't generally have to score very much. I'm no Jets fan but I tend to root for most players early in their careers. Except Patriots. I wish Darnold the best.

Oh, but as for going for two with almost no time left in the game and down by one? No, that's crazy. The odds on making a two-pointer are ever so slightly below 50%. https://rileykolstefootball.com/2018/07/08/two-point-study/ Gonna bet the game when you don't quite get coin-flip odds? That would be crazy. You don't buck the odds like that, not if you've got sense.

Yeah, missing the 2 pointer would have put us an extra possession away. Same with missing the two-pointer later in the game, though. We had to make a two-pointer sometime either way. The odds on making a two-ponter don't change depending on how much time there is left in the game. Make it earlier or later and it's no problem, so that doesn't matter. Miss it earlier and you now know that you need two possessions with seven minutes left in the game during which to work the clock and guide your strategy. Miss it later and you now know that you need two possessions when you have ... what? ... 30 seconds left? A minute if you're lucky? Your fate has already been decided at that point.

That's nonsense that this "by all rights should have ruined him." Plenty of rookie QBs on rebuilding teams came onto teams without much around them. Think Troy Aikman. Joe Montana. Peyton Manning. Plenty of others. I suppose it might have ruined some players but again, lots of franchise QBs brought in during rebuilds had little talent around them the first year. If the GM brings in guys to fill in after that, plenty of those QBs go on to become franchise guys, if they have it in them in the first place. The Bills used virtually no resources on the offense before that year, except to bring in Allen himself. That was the plan, and it has worked out fine indeed, largely because by skimping on the offense and getting rid of big salaries, they cleared up the cap superbly, allowing them to address the offensive side this year. Anyway, there's every evidence they didn't want Allen to play that year or at least not till the end. But they screwed up (they have admitted this) by not bringing in Derek Anderson when they let McCarron go. Allen has certainly done his part. So has the front office. They have been terrific by all evidence.

So, when the Bills were consistently poor to mediocre for 20 years they said they didn't like/trust what they see. And now when the team actually is starting to look like a real team with a real front office that might be good this year but sure looks like next year will be even better ... they stop saying they don't like/trust what they see? Wow, this is tough to figure. I wonder what nefarious plot they're hatching.