Thurman#1

No, he's right on. This is how stats work. These numbers have high variance. Of course most of his production will come in around 30 - 40% of his games. Again, that's how it works for most data sets of this type. You get some good games, some average games and some not so good. Most of the production comes in the good games. That's just how the numbers work. Look at James Cook. 928 total rush yards in 14 games. Four games over 100 yards. So 46% of his production came in just four of his fourteen games. Does that mean he sucked in the rest or that his production is only sporadic? No, it's how this all works. Throw in Cook's next highest game and you find that he got 505 yards in his best five games. Meaning in the rest of his games he only averaged 47 yards per game in his worst nine games. That's just how stats work. Take out the best games and the rest will show a pretty low average. It's just math in cases when a guy gets on the average around seven or eight targets a game or around 11 or 12 carries a game. There's going to be a lot of variance. And when there is a lot of variance, then if you take out the top 30 - 40% of games, the rest will average quite low. Leaving out this year, when he's been fighting injury and dealing with a completely new offensive system (and in Cleveland a horrible situation this year), in 2021 - 2023, Coop totalled four games under 20 yards. Chase had two in the same period. Out of roughly 50 games, three seasons, that's not a significant difference. Unsurprisingly, three of Coop's games below 20 came in Cleveland. Having Joe Burrow throwing to you rather than Massage King will smooth out your variance a bit. But not a lot, as MDH showed. This is how everyone's stats look, or rather the huge majority of guys stats, though if you get so many more targets, as Chase does, you will have fewer extremely low totals such as under 20 yards. But you will still average a lot lower in your bottom 60 or 70% of your games. It's just math, and math works the same for everyone. This year Chase has only had one game where he got less than 6 targets (5 vs. KC) and only six games with less than 8 targets. Whereas Cooper in Buffalo this year has had two games with more than three targets. And one of those two (vs. LA) he had 14 targets. That's variance.

Both Keon and Cooper were out Week 10. And the offense rolled along just fine.

Yeah, and DaQuan, who I thought played better against the Pats, hasn't been as good overall as he was last year, and he's an absolute key guy for this Bills DL. McDermott's D has always depended on having one huge guy in the middle to make it easier on the smaller lineups they put around that guy. When the big fella isn't quite doing what he usually does, there's nobody really to take up the slack. We don't have another monster in the middle of that type. But I think what many here are missing is that Terrell himself has missed games for injury. He played 18% of snaps in Week 2, 0 in Weeks 3 and 4 and 0 in Week 8. Ankle and pec. That also may well be a big part of the reason he's not playing quite as well.

What, specifically? I read your post and went back through and read every post, hoping to find something, and I didn't, really. Yeah, we might be holding him back for the playoffs. Or not. That's wishful thinking. Could be true, but there's no logical reason to specifically think so. Yeah, the offense got better when he got here, but we were just as good with him on the bench as we were with him on the field. He's made seven or eight really excellent plays. But so have most of our skill position guys. There are a lot of other likely reasons for our offensive improvement around mid-season. I wouldn't expect to see anything much that breaks any trends the next two weeks now, without much to play for. Hopefully he really shows out in the playoffs. I'm hoping so, but not holding my breath.

I mean, you can say that "the offense has been on another level since he was added to the team," as you did. It's not dead wrong, but it's not right on, either. Amari's first game on the field was Week 7, and that was when the offense took off. But he was off the field completely for Weeks 9 and 10 and there was no letdown. Looks to me far more about correlation than causation. IMO a huge chunk of that improvement is what was to be expected from the beginning of the season, that it would take a bunch of time to see who did what well and who didn't, and to get used to playing together. Josh's WRs this year, other than Shakir, had never played with Josh before. Samuel had played with Brady before but none of the others had. This was always likely to take some time to figure out. If Amari had been the reason for the offense getting better around mid-season, how come we weren't worse in Weeks 9 and 10 with him on the bench? Causation here is really really questionable. Has he likely helped some? Absolutely. But there is very likely a host of other reasons that have resulted in the larger portions of that improvement. Correlation, not causation.

Joe Marino pointed out that Josh went to his first read a very low percentage of the time, by far the lowest this season. It seemed like part of our problem is that Josh was thinking about the home run ball way too often again. When he said that, it sounded right to me. When he takes what they give very often, this offense is seriously dangerous.

46% of the snaps against Detroit. We looked unstoppable with him and without him.

He won't be paid like a #1 wideout. Probably not even if he acts like one for the next six games. He'll be 31 next season and he wasn't wildly productive this year with either team. The question is whether we want to pay him like a top-level #2. That he'll probably get from someone. He got $20M a year for his last contract. My guess is he won't get that again, but maybe closeish, $12 - $18, depending how productive he is during the playoffs. Yet another guess is that we wouldn't pay that unless the other terms were quite team-friendly, allowing an easy and relatively painless cut if things didn't work out that well. This is all assuming - as I do - that he's still having health problems that are limiting his effectiveness. Nah, not at all. He's playing less than 50% of snaps and we're not noticeably less productive with him out there than we are when he's on the bench.

This, at least so far. But it's fairly likely that he's having some kind of problem right now, probably physical. We don't know the whole story yet. It'll be interesting finding out what is going on.

We are not not "typically ... seeing average to below average QBs have their best days throwing on us." This wasn't Maye's best day, he's had probably three better days in the last five weeks or so. The guys who looked terrific against us are Goff and Stafford most recently . They are very far from average to below average. This was supposed to be a rebuild year and we're maybe seeing it recently, as the safety problem hits home and we weren't able to bring in a pass rusher to replace Floyd other than maybe our rookie pick who if he does turn out to be a good one will likely take a while, which you'd think he would as a mid-round edge. Thought DaQuan wouldn't be a problem, though, and he's just not having a very good year.

Nonsense. They've been damn good way past 2017. Right up to last year, when healthy. This year, though, there's an issue, and it's real. Will it go away when we get healthy? Hard to say. Hope so. Can't be said for sure, either way. But they need to bring in a serious pass rusher if at all possible next year. Last year with Floyd, they had a respectable rush. This year not so much yet.

Don't know if he's washed, it might be some kind of temporary issue. But yeah, he's not the guy he used to be, and it's really showing in the run game. And the pass game as well, really. But the rest of the line is mostly smaller guys. McDermott's D needs that 1-tech to force and eat double-teams. DaQuan did it the past couple of years but he's not doing it at nearly as high a level this year.

Funny, I thought McDermott said pretty much the exact opposite. McDermott: "...Also, not really knowing, Baylon tweaked his calf on Thursday I believe it was, not really knowing if either of those guys would be available as well, and didn't want to overload either one of them so just trying to patch it together best we could there and applaud Dorian for going out there and being able to stay out there. So unfortunately again for Baylon with this calf and, just having one of those years it seems like. Skurski: How much of that was maybe playing it safe given where you are in the season and where you are in the standings versus they just weren't ready to go. McDermott: It's funny because we have those conversations with out training staff, it's like, "Hey, we're not holding anybody just because of this or that because every week it's tough. But certainly understanding already being in the playoffs, but you're also, you're trying to improve your football team overall, so, they just weren't ready overall, Jay, in answer to your question. But you're trying to get your team with some level of continuity so you can develop this player playing next to this player and then this player playing next to this player over here, and the symmetry, the connectivity of a defense. At the end of the day, those guys weren't ready to play. And that was from our medical staff.

"A lot" is a major exaggeration. When the Bills are a big favorite they tend to win big, but it is true that a few times that does not happen and they don't play to expectations. On the other hand, division games are often tougher than they look to be on the surface, and that's true around the league, not just in Western NY.

Yeah, hadn't really paid attention to him before, but unfortunately Maye looked pretty composed and decent, for a rookie.

Second seed is better than third, fourth or fifth. And at least for the next week, they still have a shot at the #1 with the Chiefs playing the Steelers and the Broncos who almost beat them last time except for the blocked kick. These games aren't highly important, but they are important. And the team knows that.

Week 7: 19, Week 8: 38 Week 9: 0, Week 10: 0 Week 11: 37 Week 12: Bye Week 13: 27 Week 14: 32 Week 15: 32 They weren't worse when he was out. He's playing less than 50% of snaps when he's in. He's not the reason they're better. Has he helped? Sure. But they've played great when he's out and great when he's off the field. He hasn't been huge by any means. But nice? Yeah. Solid? Definitely. Useful, productive? Absolutely. But they've done very well with him off the field. Like WEO, I hope, maybe even suspect, that he gets used more during the playoffs.

https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-qb-josh-allen-has-played-through-broken-hand-during-mvp-caliber-season-in-2024 Newsflash: Josh good. EDIT: Ah, I see your point. Sorry. Agreed, it was NOT reported to be broken till right now. Man, our guy is a baller!!

Crying and holding your end up are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. You can also quickly stop crying and get ready.

Yup. Not important either way, IMO. Indeed. And this does not reflect badly on that. So ... you grew up in a nudist colony?

Mahomes. Josh gets a ton more yards downfield, but Mahomes is just as good moving in the pocket and is just as threatening at throwing the ball. As many have correctly said, nobody, really, but I'd put Mahomes among the very closest.

That's not true. Plenty of guys have improved a ton while on the bench.

Well, you're definitely right or wrong about that.

If they trade him this offseason, it'll only be about $7M more in dead cap than we had on Diggs this year.

Reid really is one of the best coaches in the business. But he got good QB play from Donovan McNabb because Donovan McNabb was a very good QB. Same with Vick as well, he was a good QB, though far more dangerous as a runner than a passer, but he was tough to play against. And by the end of his career, after they stopped running him through the cement grinder with a new OC every year, so was Alex Smith, till the injury anyway. Did he make them better? Probably, he's a damn good coach and particularly so on offense. But those three were good. Vick least so, but still scary when young and athletic, but it's true his most dangerous year was that one year when Reid got him to start thinking like a passing QB rather than a running QB. But it only lasted a year, even though Reid was still there Vick just couldn't maintain that level. Agreed there's more to the Chiefs than Mahomes but without him (no, I don't think they'll be without him for much time if any, but ...) they're a decent team not a deeply dangerous team. Same with us without Allen, same as just about any team losing an elite QB.