Thurman#1

Who referred to him as a legend? He was a good player. He remains in the hearts of Bills fans because that Lett play was the kind of play Bills fandom loves, working as hard as possible regardless of the situation. It has become a symbol, and for good reason.

Nah, our pass defense was genuinely excellent. You're right that total yards passing has that problem, that it's dependent on how often opponents pass. But passer rating rests on how good you are when they do pass, not how much they pass on you. And the Bills were 3rd in the league in defensive passer rating. DVOA also doesn't factor in how often you pass. It's how well you pass. And the Bills defensive passing DVOA was 2nd best in the league. Their pass defense was top-rate..

He said something bad about the Bills. It's proof he's not smart. He's bad. Until he says something good about the Bills. Then he'll be good again.

That's not me "choosing to gut a team." It's the universal understanding that they rebuilt. And that you simply can't intelligently judge a rebuild by wins in the first two years. You wanted to reload, not rebuild? Fine. IMO, a really horrible decision, but whatever. A team in a horrible cap situation, with low to middling personnel built around a defensive system that only Rexy uses and a quirky offensive system designed by a coach, Roman, who'd left mid-season, a system built to compensate for no passing game by a good run game, and on top of that they had no franchise QB and no top five pick in a draft that people at the time felt was a bad one for QBs ... is in an absolutely dreadful position to reload. It's hard to imagine a worse situation to reload. And it's very clear that not only don't you get this but you're aggressively against trying to get it. But I'll do what I can. Again, those coaches you're talking about were on reloading teams, teams that had had a GM in place putting a foundation together. More, the coaches you're talking about inherited these QBs: Goff going into his second year. Wentz going into his second year. Bledsoe/Brady. Trubisky in his 2nd year. Whereas the Bills had Tyrod going into his sixth year. See the tiny little difference there? "Reload?" I can only shake my head and roll my eyes in pity.

Absolutely. That's why it was such a horrible job for Kraft to hire Belichick as coach and allow him to bring in Pioli and then promote him to GM later. And why making Howie Roseman the GM well after hiring Andy Reid has been such a disaster. And why bringing in Tomlin before making Colbert has been such a dreadful move for the Steelers. Yup, always hire your GM before your head coach. . . . . . . . . . . Oh, wait. In the real world, you do it either way. It's worked great both ways and it's also been a disaster both ways.

You're missing the point. Comparing the win totals between a coach who's rebuilding (this group) and a coach who's reloading (Jauron) is like comparing SAT score between a high school senior and an elementary school student. A rebuild puts you at the baby stage in the life cycle of a team. A reload shows you have committed to win and very soon. The guy who says, "Well, the high school guy got a much higher score, so that shows he's smarter than the elementary school kid, he'll be more successful in life than the elementary school kid and he'll do better in law school," ... that guy just doesn't get it. Nor does the guy who compares win totals for the first two years of a rebuild with win totals for the first two years of a reload. Fair enough if you wanted the Bills to rebuild rather than reload after Mularkey. But that's not the way they went. Building a very good defense.

"With matching five-year contracts, it's true that Beane and McDermott will be tied together, and should enjoy a solid working relationship. " https://buffalonews.com/2017/05/09/five-things-know-new-bills-general-manager-brandon-beane/ Yeah, just too early, to make either of these decisions two years into a rebuild, absent a massive disaster or success. Wildly unlikely.

"Williams initially suffered the injury in OTAs and Taylor wouldn't comment on the severity. That quickly morphed into the Bengals refusing to let Williams address it with the media, which gave the air of something significant potentially on the way. " https://bengalswire.usatoday.com/2019/06/25/jonah-williams-miss-rookie-season-shoulder-surgery/ That's a shame. I hope he recovers quickly.

Fired? Lose the locker room and win 2 - 4 games looking awful. Extended? Why? Too early. He's hired for this year and two more. But playing the game, they reach the AFC championship game. Chance of either happening, maybe 1%.

Know which other defense was not very good in the red zone? The Pats. 24th in red zone defense. And Carolina also, the team the Bills are in many ways modeling themselves after. 27th in red zone defense. I agree with your larger point here, that the Bills weren't 2nd best on D. Somewhere around 4th or 5th, I'd argue ... between 3rd and 6th probably and that's very good. You're right that they need to work on pressure, but picking Oliver should help.

Yes, you did say in an earlier post that they had mostly misses on offense ... and it's just as ridiculous a contention now as it was when you said it. It's been debunked a dozen times. A thirteenth isn't necessary for anyone but you but since you're on an infinite loop of repeating nonsense, I guess it won't hurt to point out one more time what makes sense here ... that Beane now has two drafts, and only one of the groups has played so far. And on offense in that draft he picked Josh Allen and nobody else till the fifth round. So far, Wyatt Teller, that fifth rounder, has been a good value. And again, they spent virtually no FA money on offense last year, due to the awful salary cap situation that Beane had committed himself - in his job interview - to cleaning up by the beginning of this season. On defense they spent money and got results in FA. On offense they spent almost no money. For what they spent they actually got a bunch of bargains, Foster, Croom, McKenzie, and a bunch more ... unbelievably cheap and yet productive. And since you're also on nonsense repeat as far as wins, I'll repeat the obvious refutation again as well. The Bills were rebuilding. The first two years of a near-complete rebuild are always going to be awful for wins and losses. Always. Yes, it's possible to win quickly when you bring in a new coach ... if you're not rebuilding. Not a single one of the coaches you bring up here was rebuilding. Not one. All reloads. They were in an awful position to make a big turnaround. Still in bad cap shape and committed to the owners to get the cap in terrific shape by this season ... hoping to sit a rookie QB for the season or much of it, and with an offense that they hadn't yet seriously addressed except for bringing in Josh Allen. Last year always looked like it was going to be a bad year. This year they are finally in much better shape to achieve some more wins. 11-12 wins is a ridiculous expectation with a 2nd year QB and an OL that doesn't look to have got a single guy who's played next to the guy on either side of him. But yeah, very reasonable to expect real improvement.

Yes, they had Tyrod. But, no, they didn't have a long-term GM that McDermott could respect and trust. You keep avoiding this, but it's almost certainly the reason they didn't go after a QB in that draft. McDermott didn't trust himself, a defensive coach, to pick a quarterback, and his temp GM, Whaley, hadn't shown much talent at picking QBs either. They knew the next year was shaping up as a year when there would be a lot of good young QBs, and it turned out to be so. McDermott figured the next year they'd have a GM he could respect to make the pick in a terrific year for QBs. We simply don't know how this will turn out. If Allen develops well, it could still turn out to be a great decision.

I disagree. Being able to come out against a team that has no idea what they'll see will be a major advantage for the Jets that first week. I'm sure the Bills will have a few surprises going the other way also. As for the last game being at home ... the last game counts just exactly as much as the 12th game, or the 7th, or any game. It's good that we play the Jets, whom I don't think will be as good as us this year. Whether that game was 16th or 5th makes no difference in the end. Yeah, it makes it likelier we'll win our last game, but also likelier that we come into that last game with one more loss due to having not played the Jets twice yet.

I disagree. Ability to convert should be a factor, but IMO the second or third-most important. Situation is most important. 4th down conversion rates are statistically all over the place, due to the small sample size and the difference in likelihood of conversion in different situations, such as a 4th and 1 being far easier than a 4th and 18. 3rd down conversion rates are far more indicative of ability to convert, due to larger sample. But situation is still a huge factor. And 3rd down conversion rates go from 29% to 47% last year. There are none in single digits and nobody over 75%. They're gathered in a reasonably small range. Not to be too bad of a bore, but how much of the difference might be due to ... for example, only ... say, the Colts having an average 3rd down of 3rd and three while the Cards might have an average 3rd down of 3rd and five. Made up those numbers ... if anyone can be bothered to find the real ones, that'd be great. Point is, though, situation is by far the most important variable. Oh, and the Pats were 9th in 3rd down conversions. But 25th in 4th down conversions, at 50%, probably because they are a bit more situationally aggressive than most teams, and for good reason. Fewer times to need to make desperate conversion attempts, but more willing to try in non-desperate situations where the distance is a bit longer than most coaches would be comfortable with. Nice post, Syhuang!!!

Here's the link to the story. Saw it yesterday, it's Bucky Brooks. Five Blockbuster Trades that would Spice Up the Season. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001034312/article/five-blockbuster-trades-that-would-spice-up-the-2019-nfl-season "Inspired by the Davis trade, I surveyed the NFL landscape to see which teams are a player or two away from making some noise as a potential playoff or title contender. Here are five teams that I would love to see make a blockbuster trade heading into the season, listed along with their potential ideal trade targets." So, it's more that he'd like to see it than a recommendation. Here's the Sports Injury Predictor page for Reed: https://sportsinjurypredictor.com/player/jordan-reed/6714 Tremendously talented. Not sure he's the kind of guy that they're looking for, though.

It's very likely a smart algorithm indeed. It's been tried with great success. Yes, it was in high school, but the team using it have had terrific success. Look up Pulaski Academy. Their coach doesn't never punt, but almost never. He punted in his most famous game (there's a documentaray about it, against Highland Park). But it was 4th and 30 from their own 16. The math said punt, so he punted. https://www.si.com/college-football/2015/09/09/why-college-football-coach-should-adopt-no-punt-always-onside-kick-philosophy I wouldn't do what Kelley does, but I'd sure take more risks than most NFL coaches are willing to assume. It makes sense. NFL coaches are too risk-averse on this issue and a few others as well.

Just the percentage of converting 4th downs doesn't tell you too much. You'd also need to know how difficult the situations were. Not converting a 4th and one with reasonable consistency is an indicator of inability. Not converting a 4th and 18 with consistency is more an indicator of how often you were so far behind in a game that you would be trying to convert a 4th and 18. And yes, our offense was bad last year. Which has a lot to do with how very few resources we put into improving the offense the last two years (outside of bringing in Josh Allen). The unit we put a lot of resources into performed quite well last year. This year we had a ton of money under the cap thanks to their hard and painful work in clearing up the cap. And they put a lot of resources into the offense. I, personally, expect an improved offense this year, with the improvements to the OL in particular and the offense in general.

It's the ranking. 1st to 32nd. Which means that this is based entirely on how aggressive each team was rather than how successful. In fact, they didn't even look at how successful each team was in those situations.s

It's an interesting chart. I'd like to see the Bills be more aggressive in this measure. But the Bot recomments going for every 4th and 1. Including your own 9 yard-line. I'm not that aggressive, not if the game's close or especially if you're ahead with some time left. If you don't make it there the opponent get the ball at a place where any team would get 4.5 expected points. I agree that NFL teams are too conservative in this decision. I think the Bot errs a bit on the other side.

Last year they were still getting out of the cap morass Whaley left them in. Yes, the offense was bad. Largely because they spent almost nothing on it in FA. Not to mention cutting/trading a whole bunch of guys whose salaries would have clogged things up for years while simultaneously bringing in draft capital allowing them to move up to get Josh Allen. Yes, the offense was bad last year. This year they are in good cap shape and so they addressed that offence. So yes, this is indeed what professional and responsible cap management looks like in a rebuild. Suffer for a couple of years. Clear space. Handle the space intelligently so that you can fill the most massive gaps and yet leave yourself a bunch of space the next year.

And $45 mill free next year, before this year's unspent money gets rolled over and added in. 9th in the league. They're simply smarter in terms of approach and procedures than a Bills regime has been in a long long time. That doesn't guarantee success, but it's the best way to start to maximize your chances.

They kept 6 WRs both of the last two years. IMO that's the best guess this year as well.

So, to sum up ... you're a Bills fan who is willing to drink Kool-Aid? Don't know if I've ever seen one of those here before. Me, I'm still legitimately hopeful, but as always, from Missouri.

Nicely put. Good post. Particularly the bit about Watkins' salary as being a major part of the equation ... a part of the equation that many here simply refuse to think about.

Looking at their organizational chart, that would be Matt Bazirgan, the Director of Player Personnel. I would think he'd be the defacto GM, with O'Brien supervising. As for the cap, they probably have guys who will help if Bazirgan needs it. Their cap's in decent shape this year, with around $20 mill left and $62 mill next year according to Spotrac. All they have to do from now till February is not screw things up too much. My guess is they can manage that. I'd guess the tough part would be synchronizing Caserio when he come in January or February - assuming they get him - with the scouting staff who have been doing the work. Tough, but not impossible. I'm not a Texans fan and I don't like O'Brien, so I won't mind if this causes big problems, but I don't think it will. I don't think it's a great move, but it might not be so very awful either.