Thurman#1

Equally, he was handled badly. When you've got a guy with bad mechanics, do what KC did. Make him do mechanics drills till he drops. And when he gets up again, make him do more. Don't let him near a game till it's part of muscle memory. No one can know if that would have helped. Probably not. But it pretty much ended his chances to be put in so early and let the mechanics slide.

No, he's not. Writers don't write headlines. That's the copy editor's job. It's the headline, not the article, that tries to hook readers and write an unbelievably quick summary and in taking out the perspective makes a slightly inflammatory headline. In the article that quote is put in perspective. It's the copy editor and the OP who used the headline rather than the article's point. And as for the "no QB should mentor" stuff, that's just as wrong. Pretty much every QBs should mentor. Not as priority one, of course, but the QB room, like every room, should work together for the benefit of the team. QBs get injured and if that happens, the new guy should hopefully be as ready as possible to step in and take over. That happens best when everyone is helping everyone else.

It's very arguable. That 2016 offense was in no way "formidable." They just weren't. Not that bad? Yeah, fair enough. They were 16th in the league in yards. And yards are how you measure an offense, separating their performance from the rest of the team. That offense was average, at best. Did they get worse the next two years? Yup, that's what happens when you rebuild ... worse yet when you rebuild with a horrible cap situation. They traded Sammy Watkins to save cap and get build up draft capital to bring in a QB. They traded Cordy Glenn for the same reasons. They cut Tyrod to save cap, and there was a bunch more. Scoring is much more how you measure the team as a whole, as scoring depends a whole ton on field position where you receive the ball. In scoring offense, if you get the ball on the one after a long kickoff return and just barely manage to squeeze it in on fourth down ... even if you lost 28 yards and kick a field goal ... the offense looks good. Hell, in 2016, the Bills defense had a pick-six and two TD fumble runbacks. Only a slowcoach would think that means the offense was good, but if you look at scoring that's exactly how it presents itself. Three extra TDs ... way to go offense for the cheering on the pick six and the runbacks. Totally made the difference. The other units were a lot of the reason they scored a bunch in 2016. The offense got the 11th best field position overall in terms of their drive starts. Made so few yards that they consistently put the defense in bad field position to start drives, 23rd in the league to be specific. Few turnovers per drive. That, the offense did well, but they weren't all that productive. Pretty much average.

Don't you get tired repeating the same old nonsense again and again? You say that "basically all their offensive moves last offseason have been flops," and that's clearly and absolutely wrong. The problem wasn't that they made a lot of bad decisions on offense. The problem was that they put very few resources into the offense due to the horrible cap situation they have now fought their way through. They brought in a bunch of guys at very low cost and many to most of those guys played pretty well for how little they were paid. As you point out, Foster was a great move. Leaving Allen out of it, there were a bunch more good ones. They signed Derek Anderson, he worked out well and cheap. They should have brought him in sooner, as they have already admitted, but it was a good move, as was Barkley for almost nothing. They drafted Dawkins, and he looks very good so far. Teller looked excellent for a 5th rounder, though he may not even make the team with how much they have Bodine was cheap and without him Groy would have made the O-line look considerably worse than they finally did. Isaiah McKenzie was a terrific pickup for $555 K for the year. He traded for Jordan Matthews who unluckily got injured but has been on rosters since and performed decently. Philly took him right back when they had the chance. He's been signed by SF for next year for a bit more than the Bills paid for him for his injured year. Croom did very well for a guy we’re paying $480K for. Ivory did a solid job for his $1M salary. Marcus Murphy was a real bargain for a guy making $630K. Sirles looked good for a $650K guy. Other than Allen, who they bent their drafts around, they went heavily defense those first two years. Are there no huge successes there? Yeah, that's correct, but it's largely because they simply didn't put almost any resources towards the offense. Did they make some bad decisions? Yeah, absolutely. More solid and good ones worth the very small amounts of money they were paid, though. Now that they've got money they're obviously handling things in a totally different way this year.

This!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, Frazier may be the only initial staff still with the team. Outside of McDermott himself, of course. Oh, plus Bob Babich. And of course his son, Bobby Babich. But only them. And in addition, Rob Boras. And Chad Hall. Along with John Egorugwu and Matt Lubick. Furthermore, there's always Matt Smiley. Moreover, Kelly Skipper. Um, Bill Teerlinck. Jim Salgado, Jason Oszvart, Matt Worswick and Eric Ciano. Oh, and Mark Loechler and Hal Luther. I mean, there's been more than 20% turnover. Quick, you get the other villagers and I'll grab the pitchforks and torches.

I disagree, personally. His skill set matches our D, and most. We just would really appreciate an upgrade.

Base 3-4 defences are still pretty common: Packers, Rams, Steelers, Ravens, Giants, Washington, Bears .... You can look at Nichols and Bullard on the Bears for instance. Lawson isn't as big as most 3-4 DEs, of course. I don't think Lawson, nor anyone else, really, just sets the edge on passing plays. But there are plenty of guys out there who aren't gifted pass rushers but still have long careers at DE. Shaq's rookie contract was four years for $10.2 mill. At that rate, he's the 49th highest paid DE in terms of average salary. I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a contract around there again, perhaps even a bit higher.

I would love this, though over the years it's not what the Pats have done. It certainly was what they did last year, though, and when Brady was a young QB, they were absolutely making it a priority to have a run game teams had to respect.

There is little evidence of that. Ford is an absolute mauler in the run game. They grabbed an RB in the third despite already having three RBs. The first two offensive picks of the draft lean run game rather than pass game. Their running back group looks a lot better than their WR group. If that would shock you, you might want to wear insulated rubber shoes and gloves, avoid standing in water, install Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters, turn off the current at the switch box, use a fiberglass ladder, avoid power lines and go inside the instant you hear thunder.

Me too.

I'd agree. He said he was going to tear down the Rex team and that the process was going to take time. Why would he say it would take 4-5 years when there certainly was a chance it would only take three, not a great chance, but a chance. It's not speculation that they told the Pegulas the cap situation was a disaster and promised to get it in great shape by the 2019 season. Which meant a rebuild. Nor is it speculation that they like this regime. They hired McDermott and it was about a week later that they loved him so much they put him in charge over Whaley who at that point looked like the one guy that they really trusted and liked. They absolutely do love this brain trust. Not that that means that if the team falls apart it would all be OK. But the Pegulas understand rebuilds. And yeah, the first two seasons of that rebuild have not shown inspiring football, particularly against good teams. That's what rebuilds look like for the first two years. And agreed, if they don't show progress this year I'd agree that the hot seat is a good possibility. But it won't require playoffs and winning a game against NE. It'll require observable progress.

Sorry, that's not a difficult challenge, Scott. The Harbaugh Niners are a recent one. They reloaded with Harbaugh and a few extra guys. And it had been an awful lot more than three mediocre seasons, and yet that FO was not turned out, they'd been one long regime under McCloughan and Baalke for around eight years, a regime that kept chugging right along. The Texans didn't win ten games till the 6th year of Rick Smith's tenure at GM. Look at Ozzie Newsome's first four years in Baltimore. Look at the Jags' current GM, Caldwell. Four very mediocre years from 2013 to 2016 and he's still there. So that's just wrong that you don't get 5 years after 4 straight mediocre years. It's not all that common but it happens. The way it actually works is that some owners have patience and some don't. And that's fine that you think less than 9 wins would be disappointing. Unless your real last name is Pegula, it's hard for me to care whether you'll be disappointed. Not that I'd be thrilled myself. But if it happens and they win seven or eight and show signs of progress, I'll understand why they keep McDermott and Beane.

That's a shame. He'd have helped Allen a lot. I don't think that Barkley is as effective at that role as Anderson was.

Um, no. He's saying that they aren't getting fired because the Pegulas like them. That's massively different from saying that a poster on a message board likes them, Scott. And that the Pegulas knew that the first couple of years were not likely to be good. And yeah, there are plenty of examples of teams being awful and then going far into the playoffs in the first or second year of their new regimes. Those instances happened in reload situations. Or sometimes it happens in situations where the "awful" year was the second or third year of a rebuild. Where it simply doesn't happen is in near-complete rebuilds like the one going on here. And it ain't about whether fans would be OK with 3 straight years of not being very good. It's understanding that rebuilds show massive improvement in the third year a very small amount of the time. I found it was around 20% of the time when I did a major research project a few years back on rebuilds and successful rebuilds in particular. Much more often it takes till the fourth or sometimes even the fifth year for successful rebuilds to hit the real fast track. No, fans wouldn't be thrilled. But the smarter ones would understand, through their exasperation. I absolutely expect some real improvement this year. But it's very possible that that improvement might result in maybe two or three or four more wins, and that would not look like a bad thing at all ... in the long run.

The problem is not so much that he has had problems evaluating or developing offensive skill position talent. It's that they haven't had the cap situation and draft resources to allow them to spend almost any resources on the offense the last couple of years. For what they spent (mostly UDFAs and vet min deals and an occasional flier), the returns were actually pretty solid. For every injured Matthews and just not good enough Benjamin, there's been a UDFA Foster, a vet min McKenzie, a cheap Chris Ivory, a near-minimum Marcus Murphy ... They just haven't poured the resources there in the past. This year they committed themselves a bit more. We'll be better able to see how they hit, and worth noting that next year's draft is supposed to be tremendous for WRs. We are indeed going to see if they are right going forward.

Yeah, used to all happen (or not) in the last few days before training camp in late July or early August.

Yeah, I trust the process too. Not to mention that I'd been using "trust the process" for 20 years before this. It's an old saying that originally had nothing to do with the Bills or the Sixers.

McBeane. Should've been good for about a day's worth of chuckles and then thrown into dry dock.

Sure, you can justify nearly anything you want. On either side. You can pick any receiver on any team, tear apart his play and find the plays that fall on whichever side of the bell curve you're desperately trying to pretend is the whole picture, and then you can highlight them. Then you can say, "so really he's not as good/bad as he looks." Thing is, you can do that with any receiver. Any team. Any player or side of any argument about human beings, really. But it says less about what you're looking at than it does about your method. Every receiver gets some easy TDs and some hard ones. Every RB gets some runs where he's not touched and a few where that are highlight-reel quality. It's how things work, particularly so for receivers, though, as they only get to catch balls that are thrown to them. Wide open for a TD, but the QB never sees you? Some people will call you unproductive on the play. That 31 yard TD play is an example. He wasn't left open. He was cleverly schemed open by Daboll on a successful pick play. And more, he was already open and ahead of his coverage by a step and a half when the pick happened. And that is just nonsense that he was dominated the rest of the game by the Pats. I went back and watched and he was open a lot but not thrown to early. It's not a WR's fault if he's open but not thrown to. That's not "dominated." Just the opposite, he was having a very solid game. Alpha clearly is working hard to disparage Zay in that post. He doesn't say anything positive about him at all. And the best he can say about four of the TDs are that they were against the Dolphins. True enough, but three of the four were on really nice plays by Zay, though the last of the four was on a breakdown in coverage (also a perfect play-call by Daboll, sending four guys deep against three-deep coverage, where the two in the middle do crossing post patterns). The other three of Zay's TDs were fine plays (highlights packages of the two games below) against a pass defense that wasn't all that bad (18th in defensive passer rating and 21st in defensive passing yards allowed, about five yards per game below average). https://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2018123001/2018/REG17/dolphins@bills?icampaign=GC_schedule_rr https://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2018112501/2018/REG12/jaguars@bills?icampaign=GC_schedule_rr It absolutely is as good as saying he had 7 TDs. Going from one TD in his first nine games to six TDs in his last seven games, and also going from about 33 yards per game in his first nine games to about 50 yards per game over the last seven games is absolutely progress, no matter how much people cavil and justify. ... Anyhow, I can see him getting traded, especially if he doesn't keep improving. Reasonably unlikely, IMO. He's trending upwards at a pretty steep angle. That could very easily continue, and we've seen that he's extremely serious about his fitness this offseason, an excellent sign.

Theoretically, yeah. Sure, we could assume that no stories are true, even when they're proven correct. It would be senseless, it would show more about how you felt about the media than what was correct, but you could do that if you feel like it.

Whoops. Seahawks signed him. None of this is an even slightly big deal. But looks like the story was pretty solid.

I would disagree. You can always look at what you've been able to figure so far. And IMO he's right, with the info we have now, they've drafted really well. On the other hand, you're right that claiming that we know for sure we've drafted well wouldn't make sense. It'll take more time to know.

Collins English Dictionary Accuracy: The quality or state of being accurate or exact; precision; exactness TheFreeDictionary Accuracy: Precision; exactness Macmillan Accuracy: The quality of being exact and accurate; accuracy, exactitude, precision .... I know. Dictionaries, right?

Precision and accuracy are synonyms. In fact, precision is often used in the dictionary definitions of accuracy, and vice-versa. There are indeed a few pedantic people who go on about this distinction. From physics geeks and the pocket protector set generally, it would probably draw a standing O. It's not meaningful for how football fans use the term. Oxford: Merriam-Webster