Thurman#1

Train wreck in the Jersey marshlands. Love it. Interesting to see that Mehta says Bell has been a great teammate this year. My respect for him increased, hearing that. Mehta only said that the Bills "could use" an RB, not that the Bills were a possible destination.

I guess we'll have to disagree about how good the defense was in the Miami game. For me when you allow 18 points and force two turnovers, that's a pretty good game for a defense. Certainly they were bad against Philly. And fair enough if you're agreeing McDermott is a good defensive coach. If I misunderstood you, I apologize.

That's really not true. It's full of wild exaggeration, as Joe B's column today makes clear. You're right that he shouldn't bother, but not because people are dug in. Because a space eater can be doing a terrific job and still have a low run stop percentage. If he's raising the run stop percentage of the guys around him, he's doing his job. Run stop percentage has obvious problems to it. If teams don't think they can move you and so they run away from you, your run stop percentage will drop. The stat itself has major flaws. Some defenses are built to funnel backs to certain guys. The guys who make up the funnel will have low run stop percentages even when they're doing what the coaches want them to do.

Red zone defense is one small part of defense. We may be 28th at it but we're also 3rd in yards per drive and 3rd in points per drive. If you keep teams out of the red zone at a high rate, you can have a poor red zone D and still be an excellent defense. The bottom line is does the D stifle the opponent's offense, stop them getting yards, give our offense good field position and stop points from being scored. And the answer is yes. Our defense has played terrific this year. Not last week, certainly, but they've been elite over the course of the year. They have to keep it up, obviously.

Yup. Which should probably indicate to people that finding a current whipping boy and piling on .... maybe it's just not the smart thing. Maybe we should avoid grabbing a pitchfork and a torch and joining the stampede to the castle. Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, just kidding. Why choose low-key analysis and a wait till the evidence is in mentality over the where can we find a scapegoat urge? Waving the pitchforks is way too much fun.

Yup. Star did his job and some others didn't. No, it doesn't, as the article says Lotulelei was an impact run defender and the others weren't. So that indeed doesn't say much for the rest of the defense. But it does say a lot for Lotulelei. Again, still not convinced overall about him this year, but he's been doing what they want him to do in his career, right up through last year.

Pretty much everyone. A few muts and fruitcakes excepted.

Nonsense. Carolina didn't re-sign him because they were having cap problems and had other priorities. And after letting him go, coincidentally, their defensive yards allowed per carry went from 3.9 YPC (9th) with him in 2016 and 4.0 YPC (10th) with him in 2017 to 4.7 YPC (20th) without him. Weird, hunh? How with him there they stopped the run like crazy and when he left it was almost like they couldn't stop it at all. And then the Bills go from 23rd in defensive YPC in 2017, their last year without Star ... to 9th in the league in Star's first year with them. Wacky how the coincidences pile up around Star, hunh? How the teams where he's been there (sucking, according to you) have stopped the run better? Nutty. And run stop percentage is a stat with a ton of variables beyond how well you play. Does a nose tackle occupy a double-team and stand them up and cause the RB to cut to a different hole? Whoops, he failed on the play according to run stop percentage. Lotulelei's role is to allow other guys to raise their run stop percentages. If he had fallen off a cliff in Carolina his last two years and wasn't getting the job that they wanted done ... don't you think that his defensive coordinator might have maybe noticed? And not paid him $10 mill a year to come with him? This argument is simply ridiculous. There's an argument that can be made that he has fallen off between last year and this year. But as of last year he was doing an excellent job eating blocks and stuffing the run that way.

They're playing extremely good defense without the sacks. And yeah, they sure weren't good yesterday but overall this D has been excellent. We're 8th in QB hits this year (NFL.com), and above average in sacks at 14th. The solution could easily be to stand pat. Because the goal isn't to win this year. That may be the goal of many fans on here but McDermott and Beane have made very plain what their goal is ... to be consistently competitive. Not to win this year. To be consistently competitive. And a lot of deals that would help us win this year would hurt in the long run. They won't make those deals. Nor should any smart organization with their goals. Now, if they find deals that would help this year but not hurt in the long run ... great. That's the kind of move that would make sense.

It is indeed tough for a team with a young offense and a young QB like ours to get quality wins ... most particularly when we play very very few quality teams. Hard to get quality wins playing a schedule mostly full of dogs. Teams that rebuild generally suck for a while. This year would be the first year you'd hope they start to pick up a really great win or two and we don't have a schedule that seems to give us a lot of chances. Outside the Pats (and who has picked up any signature wins against them this year?) how many apparent playoff teams are on the schedule? One? Three if the Eagles and Cowboys make it?

Yeah, they probably do. The Bills did a complete rebuild. That takes time, painful time. The lucky rebuilds get genuinely competitive in their third year but that's very few, and almost always a team that gets it's franchise QB in year one. Reloads like the one in LA are supposed to come fairly quick. And with how LA is playing now, it's worth wondering whether they are going to be a good team. SF was set up beautifully by following on from Kelly's 2-14 season. And it's worth throwing out there that SF might not look as good if they hadn't managed to luck into Garoppolo that cheap and easy. I get that it's frustrating to hear that the Bills might need more time. Doesn't mean it's not correct, though. They really might. And they might even get a lot better next year, though nothing in the future is a given.

Yeah, weird that they would put their guesses out there. Nobody on these boards guesses on trades. Oh, wait ...

Six more years would put him way over average at his position. And plenty don't make it much past 32 or so. I always look at Smerlas and Jim Burt, but there are plenty of other examples. Thanks. I'll take a look. If they do bring in a DT, this is the kind of guy they might well look at.

For a 31 year-old? A first and a fourth? I'm glad you're not the GM. More, grabbing him doesn't seem to be the type of move this FO makes, bringing in very high-priced FAs, and especially very high-priced older FAs.

It's not "obvious it isn't his position," to any but a few annoying Bills kibitzers. What's obvious is that despite a bad game the defense has quickly developed into an extremely good one, and that McDermott knows a ton more about D than you do.

His "massive" regression? Puh-leeze. If he'd massively regressed, McDermott, I'm guessing, might possibly have noticed and, you know, not brought him to Buffalo. What, pray tell, was his "massive regression"? Going from averaging 2.5 sacks his first four years to 1.5 sacks that final year? Woooooooooooow!!!!! Massive!!! He's never been a big numbers guy. His sacks have mostly been of the I'll keep active and occasionally the edge guys will cause a QB to run into me type. He's a space eater. It's what he's always done and it's what they hired him to do here. And he did it just fine last year, but there are questions this year.

While I certainly wouldn't mind getting a premier edge rusher, it's not an absolute necessity. Carolina was 2nd in the league in sacks in 2016, McDermott's last year there. Who was their big sack artist? Mario Addison led them with 9.5, and the next guy got 6. In 2015 they were 6th in the league in sacks. Kawann Short had 11 and Addison was next with 6. In 2013 they led the league with 60. They had Greg Hardy in his one truly great year with 15. And Charles Johnson did very well across from him with 11.0. Is Charles Johnson an "elite edge rusher." The year after that they had 40. Again, I wouldn't mind a bit if we get a guy like that. But it looks a bit as if McDermott defenses manufacture sacks from scheme and lots of guys getting a few. And while drive-killing sacks are nice, any way you kill the drive is pretty much as good.

Not really buying this. Or at least not yet. We're still early in the Beane-McDermott era. And we played the Pats, a tough team that can run, very tough. It certainly was a bad game this week. So far, that's all it was, one game. And Edmunds has every chance of being a good run stopping force. He's 250 pounds and violent. The last thing we need to do is hit the panic button as you suggest and change the plan. Instead, work the plan. This is a young team. They have a lot of developing still to do. Man. People go nuts here with the wailing and gnashing of teeth after a bad loss.

Yup, four posts in a row acting as if because it's your impression it must be fact, and not a single stitch of evidence. The last and only specific you gave was wrong ... trumpeting that he should have made a tackle that he actually had made. Kinda thought so. But I'll keep looking for all those other 300+ pound fireplugs chasing down all those RBs from behind.

I'm totally sure when you wrote this it seemed to be clear and specific. And yet more moaning about film and evidence without a single actual piece.

Yup, more opinions with zero evidence. The Lotulelei haters' M.O. The guy who criticized Lotulelei for not getting the "tackle [on] the RB if he has wrapped up his legs," when he in fact did get the tackle ... that guy accusing others of not watching the plays? Yeah, great point. And by the way, when a runner is past a space eater, the space eater is done? Yeah, shocking observation, especially when you notice all the other expensive way over 350 pounders like Dontari Poe and Grady Jarrett and Linval Joseph chasing down so many RBs from behind. Good lord!

Yeah, Scott. Vet min for 4.9 yards per carry. If you think that's nothing, that shows far more about you than it does about Murphy. And yes, something for nothing is indeed pretty much the definition of good value. Do you really not get that?

Yeah, he did. He did what they brought him in to do ... which is what he did in Carolina. He plugged up the run. Did a very good job last year. And as so often is true, people without a good point have to misquote to try to make a point. What I said about Murphy wasn't that he was wildly productive or that he'd be around for years, but that he was not a bad value at all. A vet minimum pickup who averaged well over 4.9 yards per carry for us. Anyone who thinks he wasn't a pretty good pickup at what we paid is just nuts. Oh, he takes plays off? Wow, thanks for all the terrific evidence there. I see who you are now.

Nah. Gore's playing well, as is Singletary. Yeah, they need someone in the offseason. If they bring someone in at the trade deadline, I doubt it'll be an RB.

Funny stuff.