Thurman#1

You're right, I flipped it. Stupid. Sorry about that. I went back and corrected the post. While I disagree with the first part of your post (a lot of the blame for his early problems falls on his own decision of staying as a TE in his first year as a pro, the minute he decided to go OL, he was simply terrific. Agree with most of this, though. He deserved the money he got, and Buffalo simply wasn't willing to give him what he was earning.

There's real improvement so far. They've gone from very very good last year, probably somewhere around 4th to 6th best in the league, to signficantly better this year. Arguably top two, though it's very early.

People talk about this, the end of the dominant left tackle, and how the defense comes from everywhere now ... but each year the results look much the same as they always have. If it really were true that "the best way to get to the QB is sending your best pass rusher thru the weakest/least-helped/most vulnerable pass blocker," then we'd see the sack leaders at all positions, MLB, ILB, DT and so on, and and the tendency would be to rush the guards because they're nearly always the weakest pass blockers. What you find instead is that nearly all the best pass rushers in the league come around or through the LT. Look at the top eleven sack artists from last year (eleven because five guys tied for 7th, leaving a top 11 instead of a top ten). Seven of the top eleven rush the LT: Chris Jones, Danielle Hunter, Myles Garrett, Frank Clark, Chandler Jones, and TJ Watt And the one exception who's not mostly taking on tackles is freak-of-nature Aaron Donald. The guy who's moved around a lot as you suggest is another freak, JJ Watt. For the rest of the world, it's seven LTs/LOLBs, ROLB Kerrigan and Von Miller, as well as KC RDE Dee Ford, who lined up at LDE most of his career, though he's now an RDE due to being across from a better rusher in LDE Chris Jones. Nine out of eleven coming against the tackles (and JJ Watt gets a lot of his sacks that way too) and six of the nine from the defensive right side. Sacks still mostly come over the LT, with a solid minority coming around the RT instead. You don't put your best blocker at LT just because injuries happen from there (is there data on that?), it's because that's still where the defense lines up most of their best sack artists every year. And the rest of the sack list is much the same. Far more DE/OLBs higher than other positions and more coming over the LT than the other side.

That's utter *****. His agent certainly never told the Bills he was not going to re-sign there. That has never been reported and is the exact opposite of how he worked. He may well have thought that the Bills weren't going to pay what he wanted and so Peters might end up elsewhere, but if they'd paid there's no indication whatsoever Peters or Parker didn't want a contract with the Bills. The way Eugene Parker, Peters' agent. worked was to figure out the player's real value and not accept less. The Bills had two options, pay him what he wanted, and what the Eagles paid him, or trade him. They traded him, and it was a dumb decision and meant years of sub-par LTs like Demetrius Bell, Langston Walker, Chris Hairston and to QBs with the yips from worry. It was a huge contract at the time, but a couple of years down the road with an All-Pro LT, it looked like just a fair deal according to the LT market. And you're absolutely dead wrong about how he looked after the trade too. Countless Bills fans moaned and cried sour grapes to the point that many in Buffalo believed that he hadn't been good in Philly, but it's nonsense. Peters made the Pro Bowl six out of the next seven years after the trade, and five of those seven years he was first or second team All-Pro. The only year he missed the Pro Bowl was the year he missed the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon in his fourth year there. You mention the first year particularly, and again, that's nonsense. He played 15 games and made the Pro Bowl and deserved it.

Yes, he was and is a great team guy. Ask the Eagles, you'll get nothing but kudos. Ask Bills fans and you'll get little but sour grapes. "Banner: I don’t think we appreciated the quality of person we were getting fully. We wouldn’t have traded what we did for him unless we thought we were getting a person who cared and who was going to work hard. But he was fairly quickly a leader by example and word. He worked really, really hard, he cared very much about winning and the team success. I think we got the player we expected, which was a great player and I thought we were getting a good guy and we actually got a great guy. "

Catch percentage goes to both QB and receiver. Opinions on Zay be much more positive if Allen had hit him on either of the two times he was open deep this week. Zay has had some bad plays, and Josh has had some bad plays involving Zay. They do seem not to be working in sync, for whatever reason.

Come on. Pretending that I compared Josh to Tom is far far more pitiful on your part.

Palmer is absolutely not more a spiritual guru than a coach. He's a mechanics and QB play guru, if anything. Read an interview with Palmer sometime last year when he said that when he was with the Bears he was the 3rd stringer and didn't feel he was helping the team much and he felt he knew the offense inside-and-out so he thought that to help the team he would sit at a desk in the lobby of the facility at night and guys could come and ask him questions about the offense and just details and techniques. He did that several nights a week and each time he did for hours there would be multiple guys there asking him questions they weren't getting help with from coaches who didn't have time. He knows football. And there's no evidence the Bills recommended it. He started with Palmer before they drafted him. EDIT: Oh, and that's nonsense that he could end up with the same stats as last year. He's averaging 50 yards more per game, and went from 52.8% completions last year to 50.3% this year. He'd have to collapse to end up with the same numbers. He's been a lot better this year, though there wasn't much sign of that against the Pats, but every player has bad games. Dunno if he'll ever be a franchise QB, but he's better than he was last year. Please. Brady gets yelled at on the sidelines. This isn't even a molehill, it's a grain of sand on the side of a molehill.

IMO they're working with it, and they haven't maximized their talent or abilities yet, much less had as much of a chance to gel as they would have if they'd settled on five guys to play. It's seemed to me that Nsekhe has been OK at tackle and Ford at guard, but they seem not to want to do that for some reason. In any case, I think this is part of the process and I don't see them bringing in an expensive FA in Williams. Or trading Zay, their third-best WR, either for that matter.

Very true that they don't all take the same path to greatness. No argument there. And I really hear you about the people who were all over Manuel and Tyrod Taylor and all the others through those horrible years. It looked to me like he wasn't so much selling hope as saying we need to wait and see. But maybe you're right.

Aikman already had Emmitt Smith and most of that same o-line the year he was bad. 1990 starting OL: Tuinei, Crawford Ker, Mark Stepnoski, John Gesek, Nate Newton. 1992 starting OL: Tuinei, Newton, Stepnoski, Gesek and Erik Williams You're definitely right he was in a better situation, and that absolutely helped him. But he also made huge improvements in how well he made decisions, threw the football, understood defenses and generally performed as a QB. The bottom line is this, in 1990 he wasn't a good QB and by 1992, he really was.

Nathan Peterman can still go on to be great. It's very very very very unlikely, but not out of the question. Sometimes people improve an awful lot unpredictably. And while I think you're a great poster, I think you're off the mark here (not about Peterman but about what BillsBoy is saying). He's not saying that this proves that Allen will make it. He's simply pointing out the fact that many QBs who became terrific stunk it up for a while in the league first. And that Allen might be one of them but it's too early to know.

Really? Are there threads about bringing in Foles? Jeez, you're right, that's nuts. Threads on his long-term viability make sense. Most of what there is to say about that is that we don't know yet, but it's reasonable to bring it up. But anyone who says we know he doesn't have long-term viability is just a fruitcake. He absolutely did fail this week. But we'll have to wait. On the other hand, "losing faith" isn't nuts. It's just somebody's opinion. I've got no problem, especially with just asking the question. Most of what you quoted there seems OK to me, but yeah, some of it is pretty wacky. Fan boards do get nutsy after really bad (and really good) games.

On the contrary, you can prove plenty with older stats such as Aikman's from nearly 30 years ago. Yes, it's stupid to directly compare them. You're quite right about that. And you're also right that without context stats can be very misleading, especially older stats. But looking at Aikman's second year is very instructive. But by any standards, today's or that era's, Aikman was still bad and still learning in his second year. It's not like having 11 TDs and 18 INTs was good back then, or even borderline acceptable. It wasn't. In his second year, that's how he looked, and then in his fourth year suddenly he had 23 TDs and 14 INTs and was "suddenly" one of the better QBs in the NFL.

Of course it's not time to think of pulling the plug. Are there any nuts on here implying that it is? You're dead right that for some guys, it simply takes time. More time than fans would like. Are there guys who get it quickly? Yeah, a few. More take time. Some guys are NFL-ready. Some aren't. Some guys who are thought to be NFL-ready prove they actually weren't and with time improve a lot. From minute one, Allen was not considered NFL-ready. He really should have had a year to sit and study and practice his mechanics. He didn't get that. And it probably set him back, as it's exactly his mechanics that he seems to be abandoning, and complex NFL defenses that coming out of Wyoming he hadn't seen much of, that are confusing him. Nobody knows if he'll become a franchise guy, though there are reasonable guesses on both sides. He's going to need time, and we won't know till we know.

It's maybe a legitimate question, but the answer, unless he absolutely falls apart, is likely to be that he gets three or four years to grow and improve. Particularly as we're seeing improvement. Inconsistency and mental mistakes are not fatal flaws for 2nd year guys. By the way, I like your name. But the problem with EJ was that his best work was in his first year. Things went downhill after that. In contrast, Josh has showed improvement.

That's not knowing. It's called wishful thinking. It might have happened. Or it might not. But there's no particular reason to think he would have. What we do know is that after the TD, the Bills drives looked like this till Allen was knocked out of the game: 1st: (3rd quarter, 9:00) 6 plays, totaling -14 yards, PUNT 2nd: (3rd quarter, 5:27) 3 plays, totaling 9 yards, INTERCEPTION 3rd: (3rd quarter, 0:58) 12 plays, totaling 62 yards (however, Allen was injured on the fourth play, after making 27 yards, though the penalty on the hit on Allen added to that) So, from the TD to the injury, they had 13 plays totalling 22 yards. In those two-and-a-half drives, Allen went 2 for 5 for 22 yards and an interception. He did also scramble twice for seven yards each and had a sack for -11, so he totaled three yards on the scrambles and the sack. I don't see any evidence there that he'd cracked the code before he got injured.

Very true. Really, there are no make or break games until late in the season when each game starts to be either necessary or not to make the playoffs.

What the Pegulas thought is not especially relevant in a case like that. They aren't heavily involved in cap decisions. And Beane's concern for the cap is deep, it's clearly very important to him, as it should be. I doubt concern over Shady's reaction was an important factor. I think they simply thought that the difference between the RBs with Shady and the RBs without him wasn't worth the $7 or so million they'd save by cutting him.

IMO more like: 1. Morse 2. Dawkins 3. Brown 4. Beasley 5. Feliciano then a bunch close together. For comparison, Buscaglia's grades after watching every grading each player on every play, for the offense are: 1. Dawkins 2. Morse 3. Knox 4. Allen 5. Spain 6. Lee Smith 7. Zay 8. Beasley 9. Gore 10. Brown 11. Ford 12. McKenzie 13. Foster 14. Feliciano 15. Sweeney 16. Yeldon ... and those are all of the ones who had enough snaps. Singletary doesn't have enough snaps, which is what I think as well. We still don't know what we have with him, though it looks good.

The league has been pushing it for a long time. Why wouldn't they? More cash for the owners. But the players hate the idea and for good reason.

We have been talking about a long period of time. Since Wilson got his big contract, and even occassionally going back to last year, he has indeed started making top five rankings. Through the great majority of his career, he has not. Right up to around 2017 many weren't even putting him in the top ten (which I thought even at the time was crazy), but he has absolutely NOT been listed as a top five guy till very recently indeed. Again, my side of this argument is that you don't need a top three or five guy, you need a top ten or twelve guy and your team will have a chance every year they can put a solid team around him. And I think Wilson has been a top ten or twelve guy pretty much right from the beginning of his career. As for Roethlisberger, you say it's without question, but that's just not true. Plenty of people have listed him outside the top five plenty of years, saying (correctly) that he has benefitted from being in the Pittsburgh system. https://www.ranker.com/list/best-2000s-quarterbacks/ranker-nfl https://bleacherreport.com/articles/561038-nfl-best-of-the-2000s-quarterbacks#slide0 https://www.thesportster.com/football/the-8-best-and-7-worst-nfl-qbs-since-2000/ https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/the_25_best_quarterbacks_of_the_2010s/s1__29728982#slide_19 https://bleacherreport.com/articles/804479-2011-nfl-quaterback-rankings#slide27 https://athlonsports.com/nfl/ranking-nfls-starting-quarterbacks-2012 Through most of his career, the top five have generally been thought of as Brees, Brady, Rodgers, Peyton and various combinations of Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer, Phillip Rivers and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Kidding, about Fitzy anyway, but Roethlisberger has indeed very often not been considered a top five guy. Not that he hasn't had a terrific career and been an excellent QB. He has been very very good for a long time. EDIT: As I re-read your post, you say, "or just shy of top 5," about Roethlisberger. Hey, I have no argument with you there, none whatsoever. IMO he's been around 6th for most of his career. But the OP has talked specifically about the top three or five, not "just shy of the top 5."

Wait, he's not a game-changer in game three of his rookie season? Cut him!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know I generally judge draft success by how well the players do in their first three games.

Yeah, the Harvard of the Southeastern Mount Pleasant urban area. It's a pretty good school, actually, 26,000 students, with most of what that entails. Go Chippewas! Not that I went there but a friend did and he enjoyed it.

He's right that we can beat them. But that's been true every time we've ever taken the field against them. If things had gone absolutely right and they'd played a virtually perfect game and the ball had bounced right, we could have beaten them two times a year every year. It's just that all that happens together so very rarely. We're a better team this year, IMO, than we've been in ten or fifteen years. But that's just not saying much when you look back at those teams and rosters. We have a shot this week. It's just very unlikely, as it has been since Brady's second year.