Thurman#1

Hunh? Our D's yardage totals were terrific. 2nd in the league in total yards allowed. 2nd in the league in total yards allowed per drive. 2nd in the league in defensive DVOA. And no, the offense and STs weaknesses have far less impact on yardage than they do on points. Yardage does a much much better job at isolating the defense from the other units than points does. For example, if Allen throws a pick six, in yards the D's stats are unchanged, but points allowed makes it seem as if the D allowed seven points. Or if the offense fumbles and the opponents get it on the Bills 7 yard line and the Bills rack up three sacks in a row, yardage correctly shows a terrific result to the drive while points allowed shows the defense looking bad by allowing three points on the 48 yard field goal. Yards are much better at separating the units. Yeah, I'd love to add to their pass rush but they had a really really good year. Probably somewhere around 4th to 7th best.

Interesting that he was getting open more than you would think from the targets. May well just have been that Allen and he weren't clicking but it could happen next year. The blocking breakdowns were a bit disappointing. Overall I'd thought it was a near sure thing that he'd be going. I'm less convinced now. $4.5 mill would be nice to save but he's still doing a decent job. Not a $9 mill job, the Whaley contract was ridiculous. But maybe worth the $4.5 mill. I could see it go either way. Thanks for posting, Yolo.

Yeah, they could have given us a game. In the sense that they could have used the same field at the same time and put eleven men on it. We'd have destroyed them utterly. There were no pros on those two teams, unless you want to count a few likely under-the-table payments from boosters to twenty-one year olds and younger. Some future pros. But no pros. He wrote it because some people are interested. You're not? Hey, fair enough, very reasonable indeed. But the interest is here, in this thread and in the countless stories referencing it if you search for it. It's not like there are only a few oddballs out there with an interest in gambling lines.

I think you're still missing it. His words were, "Not comparing talent, only weight". And you immediately started talking about Donald's talent and production. And have continued to do so ever since, when he clearly was only trying to say that being effective at DT at 280 is very much possible. Kyle Williams played very well at 303 and these days Oliver is listed at 295. Jay Ratliff was a four-time Pro Bowler and one-time All-Pro DT who played very well at many weights from 287 - 303 and just retired after the 2015 season.

He's not relying on his opinon of the team at all for those numbers, not one bit, in either article. In the original article he's relying on his opinions of Vegas and how they predict bettors will act. In my article he goes through a bunch of statistical measures from last 2017 to predict 2018 outcomes, a method which he says has worked well for him in past years to predict the next year's results, and he was almost exactly on target, predicting 6.4 wins when actual results were 6. And I don't blame him for being negative about last year's Bills. We weren't good. He says good things about the defense, very reasonably and expresses doubt about whether we'll be able to help Allen enough on offense in a year in which both draft and FA are a bit weak on the offensive side. Reasonable, especially when it's trying to figure how bettors and Vegas will see things well before the season. Bet what you want, but don't act as if your guess about his future work is something you can reasonably comment on as far as it having anything to do with him. He might guess close to six nearer the season. But he might not.

Cody Ford in the 2nd? Jeez, I really doubt he falls out of the 1st. I hear you. But IMHO you're arguing for what you want rather than what is likely. And yeah, Cleveland was going to try to get Kizer or someone, but when you pick a QB in the 2nd you don't want to start him early. Your need for a decent FA starter to make your new GM look good is increased not decreased. Not to mention that Cleveland last year had three 1sts, a 2nd, two 3rds, a 4th, a 5th, a 6th and two 7ths. They were swimming in picks and had an extra first and an extra 2nd in the next year as well. Washington hasn't got anywhere near the volume of picks that Cleveland did when they made that trade. They've got four comp picks, a 3rd, a 5th, and two 6ths. That's not nothing but not nearly the bounty that Cleveland ended up with. Also you keep saying we moved up five spots last year, but it was a higher, more valuable five spots. We jumped up 300 points while they would only have to go 250. And as AlbanyN.Y. pointed out above, we didn't have an Alex Smith last year. Washington does have one coming back probably in 2020. We were rebuilding and looking long-term in a QB-rich year. They are not rebuilding, they're looking short-term in a year that's not great for QBs. Hey, I hope you're right. But I wouldn't bet $10 on it, much less the rent.

No, it's just the result of a mathematical process rather than one based on feelings and pure guesswork.

Nah, the game is designed for points to be scored ... or not. Either way, there's a winner. Plenty of drives end with no points. You want to maximize that number. Neither the D nor the O is fighting the rules. Both are playing within the rules. It's just a matter of how well they do that. This year, the offense has gained the advantage. But it's a cyclical game and the D will analyze and adapt and catch up. That's how it works. Overall the formula that's had most success is this ... get a good defense and a top ten QB. That'll put you in contention consistently. EDIT: I see, the video explains the meaning of the thread. And it does indeed make more sense as a mildly sarcastic comment than as yet another examination of the question.

Tied for 8th in takeaways? That's doing it pretty well.

Barnwell predicted 6.4 wins last year. On July 21st. http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20114211/the-nfl-stats-matter-most-2017-offseason-bill-barnwell Just sayin'. And again, for the apparent large majority who commented on an article without reading it ... the article this thread is about is NOT a prediction of next year's win total, only a guess of what the Vegas over-under will be when the opening lines come out, which will probably be well before the season.

This has probably been said many times by now, but he isn't predicting how many wins teams will have. Here's what he said: "I'm going to give my projections for where those over/under marks will land when the books open their 2019 totals for betting. This is not my projection of how each team will finish in 2019. I'll have my own thoughts on that as we hit the summer. This is merely trying to estimate what Vegas will set as the average expectation for each of the league's 32 teams in 2019 this spring. " I don't know when the books open but well before the season.

It's not insignificant, but it can be very dependent on luck. For instance, the 2017 Bills put up one pick-six and two fumble returns for TDs. How? Well, they managed 17 INTs and 16 forced fumbles. Pretty good. How about the 2018 Bills? 16 INTs and 23 forced fumbles. But, wait, that's better, right? Yup. But how far you can run with an INT or a fumble is based largely on how many people are around you, who sees the fumble what yard-line it all happens at, which side recovers the fumble, and a ton of other stuff, most of it pretty luck-based.

12th to 7th as we did last year was 300 points difference in the standard chart. This year's trade would only be 250. It's also based on which team is desperate and how much so. A 2nd and 3rd would seem like really good value to me.

To save $1,030,000? On a team with $90 mill available under the cap, meaning we'd increase our available cap by, what, 1.3%? When he's the best backup? I don't even begin to see it.

The '90 Giants put up 205 yards passing (plus 3 sacks for 25 yards) and an INT while they also ran up 166 yards. That's not a passing problem.

The problem in those SBs was that teams ran on us like crazy. A CB would not have stopped that. And Kirby Jackson wasn't bad. What we really could have used was a nose tackle weighing more than 260. And you really loaded the dice in that list. Of course when you draft a safety he's not likely to become an excellent cornerback. He's a safety. Burris and Thomas Smith were pretty decent, actually.

Yup. Our offence needs to get better, as does our defence.

You have to see things realistically. Most of how good an offence is reflects the QB. You pack a great OL and skill players around Dak Prescott and you get a pretty good offence. Our offence will mostly be as good as Josh Allen. Now, I'm not saying you don't improve the offence. You do. And the defence too. And don't give me the narrative that Goff is good because of the coaching and the skill players around him. Sure, that helped. But he feels that the biggest difference is that he got better. Says he knew early on his second year he was going to be better and that McVay would get the credit but that he knew he had improved a ton and that was the biggest thing. Also says he's thrilled to have McVay and the extra offensive guys they brought in, but that he had simply improved. And he's right. He was a #1 pick for a reason. And Peyton Manning had the same kind of first year as Goff did, pretty bad with flashes of real potential. Peyton improved a ton in his second year and kept doing so. It wasn't the coaching and the skill players, though they did help. And yeah right now offence is predominant. That will change. This is a cyclical league. Attacking the QB will always be a huge part of the puzzle. The Pats are in the Super Bowl not just because of their offence but because their defence held KC's offence almost completely ineffective through the whole first half. Yup, offence is up right now. Defences will adjust and catch up. It the way the league works.

Yup. And the way the Bills handled him sure didn't help him develop. They found the scheme he was pretty good in ... and changed it totally in the offseason to one he was pretty bad in. And carefully kept him behind an OL for his time here that was even worse than the current one. Terrific LT and nobody else. LG to RT in those days made the last two years look like Pro Bowlers. Remember Mike Gandy, Melvin Fowler, Duke Preston, Chris Villarrial in his last year in the league and Terrance Pennington? Or Tutan Reyes? Or Mike Schneck? Those guys were blocking for JP the year he looked pretty decent.

Excellent coaching from Reid. Excellent. He's exactly right. People want to focus on that one play, but what about the entire first half?

Kiper's very good at what he does. He's stopped submitting his mocks to the Huddle Report, but back when he did he was in the top five for accuracy over a five year period. He's very good and he's got tons of connections in team personnel departments. And as Mayock has said, the thing he admires about Kiper is how early in the process if you ask him about some safety at a small school who's maybe going to be a 6th rounder if he's lucky, Kiper spits out an informed take. He watched absolute squatloads of video on these guys. And he's thoughtful. Think he's a blowhard? Fine, that's reasonable. To me, he looks like an obsessive who I'd love to spend time with when I'm in the mood to talk football. Very opinionated, but I like that, personally. There's room for all opinions. But he's very good at his job. Not that that means he knows who the Bills, or anyone, will pick. Nobody does. But he does generally have a reasonable take with the info at hand at the time.. Which is what you can expect in a good mock. The side that the BPA plays on. Agreed the O needs more work. But they'll fill in the major holes in FA.

Not quite. The team that gets him is only on the hook for $6.5 mill ... if they cut him before the first game. If they keep him, they start paying the whole $16 mill of his 2019 salary. I don't think it's likely somebody would pay that, especially as Bortles will likely be an FA one way or the other well before the season.

Yeah, it's complex and interesting. The original post was a bit hard to read and a bit misleading. From what I can figure out of Spotrac, $6.5 mill of his 2019 salary is guaranteed, so if we picked him up, we would be responsible for that guaranteed money. Jax is scheduled right now to have $16.5 mill of dead money if they cut him. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/jacksonville-jaguars/blake-bortles-14412/ Trading him to us would I think save them only that $6.5 mill. The other $10 mill (of Jax dead money) is just the amortization of the signing bonus they paid him, and that can't be transferred to any other team in any way. I may be missing something here but I think that's all they would save by trading him to us, $6.5 mill. And I can't see them giving much in picks to save that little. A 7th rounder maybe, if they're right up against the cap and desperate? And yeah, we could cut him right away if we traded for him. This would mean we wouldn't have to pay anymore than the $6.5 mill. His unguaranteed salary is $16 mill, so if you kept him for the season he would cost another $9.5 mill. Can't imagine them paying that for Blake Bortles. If I've missed something here, could somebody tell me? EDIT: Ah, I see Hapless agrees with me about it being only $6.5 mill saved for Jax. I feel a bit safer in the opinion now.

It's more than BPA to an extent. It's BPA as the controlling idea, the number one priority. Need plays a role, it's a very slight role, mostly in eliminating a few positions from consideration high ... or a positive role if you need a QB, though even then Beane moved to make draft slot and the value of the player they needed meet so they were getting what they felt was BPA at the slot they were drafting at. BPA is 90% of how he works. You keep saying there's a role, and nearly everyone agrees with you but you've been told a bunch of times that it's a slight role. Believe that. You'll get more evidence of that as Beane spends his free agency bucks. He'll fill the obvious holes with guys who can play at an NFL level, now that cap issues won't hold him back. That will leave him without any desperately urgent needs. This is what he's said, and you should expect him to live by it. This will then allow him to eliminate even further the importance of need in his draft.

Good grief. That is awful. Thanks for finding it. Pieces of that story made my skin crawl.