Thurman#1

It's not like other QBs don't throw passes away. They do. And yeah, Allen has been inaccurate, at a much higher rate than most QBs. That's why you find a ton of stories about his inaccuracy. It really is that simple. Yeah, three passes a game would get Allen from 50% to the magic 60%. And three passes a game would get most QBs to the magic 70%. Thing is, it's really hard to get that much better. It doesn't sound like much but it's actually an awful lot. There's a reasonable chance he might improve in that way over the offseason. I'm hopeful. But it's far from a layup. Yes, I did. I was a receiver and a CB, myself. And your coach wasn't being literal. Yes, that's the way a receiver should think. But actually there are plenty of passes even in the pros when very good receivers get two hands on the ball and don't catch it and it's very understandable. When the ball is an inch off the ground and you can't cleanly get your hands underneath is one of those exceptions. Here's another thing your coach probably said, but to the QBs. "If you've got a wide receiver open by ten yards, with absolutely nobody near him, just throw the ball to him and hit him in the numbers." Josh has to throw that ball ... much much better. Josh had a guy wide wide open, had a chance to set his feet and make a full motion, and didn't get the job done. He did a terrific job to find that space, but didn't follow through. Sure, you can make justifications for Josh. But they make absolutely as much sense and no more than the justifications that can be made for Clay. They were both responsible. And Josh himself knows he should have made a better throw, as he made very clear.

Yeah, it's a joke, John. I forgot that Josh laid that pass right in Clay's breadbasket. After the game, Josh took responsibility for losing the game because of that pass. So did Clay. They were both right. Hard to imagine that anyone could ever disagree with you, huh? Anyone disagreeing with you must be joking.

I hear you. But it is possible to build around your QB while still spending the #1 pick on defense. Best guess is probably a WR or OL but pass rusher in particular would be a terrific get for the Bills as well if that's the way the draft falls.

I'm betting a borderline #2 or #3, myself. The best on the Bills? I doubt it, but possible, I think. A true #1? Nah. But there's still plenty of room for him to be really useful player.

Graham's smart, but wrong here, IMHO. Jerry Rice was 6' 2". He wasn't a true #1? That's crazy talk. It's not about height. The way it's generally used is pretty much how Bucky Brooks uses it here: "Sure, Brandin Cooks and Robert Woods are one of only three duos with 1,000 yards a piece (Tyreek Hill/Travis Kelce and Antonio Brown/JuJu Smith-Schuster are the others), but neither guy is considered a true No. 1 receiver with the capacity to dictate coverage through his presence and production on the perimeter. Defensive coordinators will take their chances in single coverage against Cooks and Woods, committing an extra defender to the box to contain Gurley." http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000999729/article/saquon-barkley-validating-giants-decision-pete-carroll-for-coy By this definition, and most definitions, a true #1 is far more than the best guy you have on your team. The way it's most frequently used there aren't 32 of them in the league, or even 20. At any time there are generally somewhere between maybe 8 and 16 in the NFL and usually it's on the low side. It's hard to get one. When you do, you generally hold onto him.

Enough with the "Clay dropped pass" nonsense. Folks, face up to it, Allen was a huge part of the problem on that play. Clay had nobody within 10 yards of him, wide open in the end zone, and Allen threw the ball extremely inaccurately, turning a sure TD into a pass that was just barely catchable ... maybe. Both guys needed to do better. And yeah, there are problems with drops and with protection ... problems pretty much every other QB in the league faces. Is he "a few more passes per game being completed away from 60+% completion percentage"? Sure. So is every QB in the league a few more passes per game away from improving 10% in completion percentages. If a QB throws 500 passes a year, he's three passes a game from improving 10%. Thing is, getting that much better is not as easy as you're making it sound. That's how football and statistics - and the world, really - works. If you play significantly better, your stats and the impression you leave will improve. But at a certain level it's very hard to make those improvements, and until you make them, you need to deal with what is, not what might be if everything improves a whole bunch. I respectfully disagree with you that he's gotten more accurate the past few games. I do see him making better decisions and generally having stepped up his game from the time on the bench. But his mechanics are still off and because he's playing he will have little or no time to address that till the off-season, always the big reason he maybe should have sat the bench this year and learned defences and worked like hell on grooving his mechanics. But I see several passes a week that are just off-target. He can absolutely improve, and before the 2nd season is the time you often see the biggest upgrades. I'm hopeful. But while improving the personnel around him will absolutely help, it definitely isn't the whole answer.

They look at yards because it's how the NFL ranks defences. And for good reason. Yards are best way to isolate the offence from the defence and vice versa. Does it tell the whole story? No. Is it the one stat that best tells the story by itself? Yup. There is more to it but if you're going to look at one stat, that should be the one you look at. Here are the top ten defences, as ranked by yards allowed: 1) Bills 2) Ravens 3) Bears 4) Cowboys 5) Vikes 6) Jags 7) Chargers ? Steelers 9) Titans 10) 49ers Leaving out any discussion of the Bills entirely, is that a pretty good list of the best Ds? Are there any teams listed in the top five (leaving out the Bills, so the Ravens, Bears, Cowboys, Vikes and Jags) that don't absolutely belong there? Ranking teams by yards allowed produces a pretty good list of good defences, for exactly the obvious reason. Not a perfect list. But pretty damn good. No, the Bills aren't the best in the league. But they absolutely belong in this group of ten. And not in the bottom two or three of it.

You saw the games. And you still don't understand what those stats are supposed to tell you? Jeez. Well, I thought I'd already said that in my last paragraph of nearly every post I've written in this thread, but maybe I didn't say it well enough. Fair enough, I guess. I'll try it again. What those stats should tell you - about this game in particular and the season in general is this - that the phrase you used there ... "independent of the offence" is something that simply doesn't exist. Defences depend heavily on offences and offences depend heavily on defences. Sucky defences greatly impair the performance of even very good defences and in the Bills case ... vice versa and even more so. When you look at those stats and see that the average defence faces 10.9 drives per game and the Bills offence stayed on the field so poorly that the Bills defence that game faced 14 drives, that out of the 13 drives the Bills offence had they managed 8/13 three-and-outs, and 11/13 drives lasting five plays or less ... and 1/13 total drive lasting more than six plays, you ought to understand that the defence was exhausted and handicapped. When you further see the Ravens started four drives inside of the Bills 29 yard line, you should understand that the offence was putting that exhausted defence in untenable situations continuously. There's a reason they've allowed fewer yards than anyone else in the league. And that reason is very very simple. They're good. They're very good indeed. And over the course of the season they've proved that. No, they're not great. But damn good, yeah. Could they improve with another pass rusher? Sure. That and some time to develop this very young group. You're not wrong. But they're already very good. The best defences have games that aren't good. You can check the record. That's how it is. The ***** '85 Bears defence allowed 38 points to the Dolphins and 28 to the 2-14 Bucs. The question ... for the eighty-millionth time in this thread alone ... is how a defence does over the season. The Bills D has been damn good over the season.

So they're saying if McDermott was fired? Yeah, they haven't correctly calculated the odds on that. They're very very near zero this year.

The team, yeah. No disagreement. We're talking about the defense only, though. I'm pretty clear, as are pretty much all of us I think, that the offense and the STs aren't exactly dominating. Wins are a team stat, not a defense stat.

Getting a great player is worth a trade up, at least if it's not sacrificing 1st rounder or a pick that would prevent you from trading up for a possible franchise QB. They gave up the 22nd and 65th for the Edmunds pick and the 154th. If he turns out as well as even you think he might, it will have been a very good trade. Yeah, they could have used the 65th (the first pick of the third round, by the way, not the 2nd) to find an LB. Who wouldn't have been as good as Edmunds, in the McDermott scheme in which having a real stud at that position is necessary. Both the player and the trade make sense ... if he turns out as well as we all hope he will.

If Mrs. Lincoln had been able to get her head together, she'd say, "You know, the production wasn't the problem." Same as the defense wasn't the problem here. Sorry, you're still missing the point. Fourteen points, your two drives, is NOT a lot. It just isn't. And it was fourteen points over the whole game The absolute most elite defenses in the league allow two TD drives more than they don't. (And it's about time we quit with the "two long TD drives *****," it was one long TD drive and one medium-length drive that started in good field position at the 39, far beyond the NFL's average drive start). The Bills D allowed 248 yards. They weren't where it all went wrong. As for your little obsession with 4th quarter TDs, remind me ... do they give you ten points for 4th quarter TDs and only 4 points for them if they come earlier? Or do you get the same number of points no matter when you cross the goal line? When a TD comes is entirely irrelevant. The question is only how many were allowed. And in the case of the Jets game, they allowed one long drive, one 39-yarder and three scoring drives when the offense and STs gave the Jets the ball at the Bills 8 (TD), the Bills 46 (FG) and the Bills 32 (FG). You keep arguing that allowing two "long" drives to a rookie QB on a mediocre team rules you out. Well, I guess that means the Vikings D isn't good. They also allowed two drives of about the same lengths to Darnold and the Jets. The whole idea that there's some one thing that really good defenses never do is just stupid, but making the threshold as low as two long drives is utterly ridiculous. Excellent defense have bad games. They just don't do it very often. Look at the Ravens. Are they damn good? Of course they are and yet they allowed 36 points to the Panthers despite only one Panthers drive start in Ravens territory. Look at the Bears allowing 31 to the Dolphins and 38 to the Patriots and 30 to the Giants. Even very good units have bad days. No, the Jets game wasn't damn good. But the argument isn't about one game. It's about the season. And yes, over the season, this defense has absolutely, without question, been "damn good." Not great. But yeah, damn good.

Throw any opinion you want out there, Scott. They were nowhere near as bad as the stats made them look. The offense and STs gave up handfuls of easy points for our opponents. In the Ravens game, the defense gave up 369 yards. Forced four fumbles but got lucky and only recovered one. That ain't great, for sure, but it also doesn't suck, particularly when you look at how the Bills offense did. Now, that was some suckage. 153 total offensive yards. That leaves juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit of a burden on the defense. Here's how the Bills offense performed, drive by drive: 3 plays punt 3 plays punt 3 plays punt 4 plays punt 4 plays missed field goal 3 plays INT 3 plays punt 5 plays turnover on downs 3 plays INT 3 plays punt 12 plays field goal 6 plays punt 3 plays punt Now, the Ravens offense drive by drive: Drive start BAL 20, 10 play 80 yard drive, TD (Bills D was bad) Drive start BAL 25, 3 play 1 yard drive, punt (Good) Drive start BAL 34, 10 play 66 yard drive, TD (Bad) Drive start BUF 25, 3 play -3 yard drive, FG (Excellent) Drive start BAL 30, 4 play 0 yard drive, fumble (Excellent) Drive start BAL 42, 3 play 13 yard drive, punt (Good) Drive start BUF 29, 4 play 8 yard drive, FG (Excellent) Drive start BAL 15, 9 play 85 yard drive, TD (Bad) Drive start BUF 14, 3 play 14 yard drive, TD (Not good, but certainly not the D's fault) Drive start BUF 1, 1 play 1 yard drive, TD (Not their fault) Drive start BAL 30, 3 plays, punt (Good) Drive start BAL 25, 6 plays, 16 yards, punt (Good) Drive start BAL 11,13 plays, 94 yards TD (Very Bad) Drive start BAL 10, 3 plays, 7 yards, punt (Good) That sure isn't good, but nowhere near as bad as you'd think if you just saw the score. The offense and STs let them down in every single way, including letting Baltimore keep the defense constantly on the field, grind them down and exhaust them. By far their worst game, probably, and not that horrible. And again, you guys pointing only at the few worst games. Somehow you never mention the ones that were outstanding. You make evaluations like this on the body of work of a whole season. Every team and every unit has a bad game or two or three.

I don't vote in these things, but I'd take Darnold / Rosen / Allen, maybe in that order, though I haven't watched a lot of Darnold or Rosen since they got to the NFL. I'd have to go look much closer. But I'd take a QB anyway. Before the draft, I said if I were the G-men, I'd take a QB but that I thought the other side was also very defensible, that maybe Manning could have another good year or two in him, especially if the Giants brain trust thought so. I haven't watched any Giants games closely but it looks like maybe Eli is finished. If so, I think they made a bad choice, though as you say, Barkley is a terrific player.

What are you trying to prove with the argument that Tyrod was 2-14 and Josh 0-4 when they had to throw a lot. That they both had the same problem? You throw more when you're behind. Nearly all teams except those few that manage with very little running will have that problem. When you're ahead, you run more to hold the lead. A lot of the times we've been behind this year, a lot of the reason has been INTs and horrible field position. Allen's a rookie, making rookie mistakes, where Tyrod didn't often have many turnovers. If Tyrod had been our QB this year we wouldn't have been as much behind as we often were. Part of the reason Clay didn't catch the ball was that it was a bad pass from Allen. And please with the what-ifs. Sure you can justify one of Allen's losses as not his fault. Think anyone couldn't go back and do the same for some of Tyrod's games? Again, I'm not attacking Allen or saying I want Tyrod back. I wanted him gone far before most did. But yeah, he's the guy you want if you want the best chance to win a game this year if your choices are only Tyrod and Josh. Good to talk to you, Doc.

I guess that's one way to put it, if you want to try to spin as much as you can. Yeah, there were two long yardage drives for two TDs late in the game. However, those were the only long-yardage drives for scores in the whole game. How many defenses regularly hold teams to two long scoring drives for the whole game? That's damn good. Even the elite defenses have plenty of games where they allow more than that. And one of those "long-yardage" drives started on the Jets 39. That's pretty good field position as well. And to remind you, those three other Jets scoring drives started on the Bills 8 yard-line (touchdown drive eight yards long), the Bills 46 yard-line (field goal) and the Bills 32 yard-line (field goal). So outside of those three drives, they only allowed two other scoring drives the whole game. Again, that loss was NOT the defense's fault. The reason people are referencing field position is that it was awful, was directly responsible for almost half the points scored against them, and that it is a smart sensible thing to reference in this situation. Interesting thing you mention that Colts game. 37 points allowed. Not good. But one Indy TD drive was two yards long. Remember that one, after the fumble? And another was 20 yards long. And another of the Indy TDs went all of eight yards, after an INT. Two TD drives, with a total of twenty-two yards gained by Indy. And then another drive started on the Bills 32 where the D held them to a field goal. The Chargers had drive starts the Buffalo 38 and the Buffalo 16. The Ravens had drive starts on the Buffalo 20, the Buffalo 29, the Buffalo 14 and the Buffalo fricking 1. Jeez it's depressing me to write this. Field position matters, bigtime, and this offense has been gifting opponents with some terrific drive starts all year.

Agreed that they aren't great. They're beyond good, though. Somewhere in the vicinity of very very good, IMHO. It'll be very interesting to see how good they can be if the offense and STs can be decent enough next year to leave the defense with, say, average field position and an average rather than well above-average number of drives to face.

You can still compare them. No two QBs will be in equal situations. Yes, Tyrod had a better running game and that was an advantage. Having a better defense is also an advantage, and last year's defense was pretty good but this year's is a lot better. Tyrod was simply much more knowing as far as defenses and schemes and so on. He was the QB you'd want out there if your mortgage was on the line for a win that game. You're right about Tyrod's limitations. I was no fan and have been saying he wasn't a franchise QB since lateish in Tyrod's first year after his performance took a drop and stabilized at almost exactly the level he then maintained for the rest of his time here. But limiting turnovers is huge, and especially so with a good defense. Allen's four times more likely to throw an INT (INT percentage) and Tyrod is one-and-a-half times more likely to throw a TD (TD percentage). 52.4% completions vs. 62.8% tells a major story as well. I'm thrilled they took a first round QB, but Allen is going to take time.

The luck they had last year was mostly about having a really easy schedule and the lucky fact that it was made even easier by hitting two of very few teams with winning records in the middle of long slumps, Atlanta and KC. We are worse this year on offence. A lot of it is the QB. Tyrod was simply better than what we have now. With any luck, Allen will improve enough next year so that won't be true anymore, but this year's QBs would all take a back seat to Tyrod if what you wanted was only to win a game. Thank goodness that's not all they wanted, that what they want is to develop towards a future where we can consistently compete with the best in the league. But beyond QB, losing Wood and Incognito drastically hurt the OL, opening holes on a team already packed with them. And this year's running attack is considerably worse than last year's, though Allen's scrambles twist the stats enough to make things look better than they are. McCoy 2018 4.0 YPA McCoy 2017 3.3 YPA We really are worse than we were last year. But that's how these things go in a rebuild. The question is how good we'll be next year. They'll be fairly active. But teams are only required to spend 90% of their cap room .... over a four-year period. And they've spent well over 90% every one of the past three years. They could easily leave a bunch of money unspent this year, if they don't like what they see, and spend it over the next two to three years. This year's FAs are fine in the areas you'd expect them to be buyers in ... low- to medium-priced guys who'll fill holes and aren't liabilities. This might be a year to make an exception and bring in one or two guys who're closer to the high end. But nobody should expect them to spend like a cowboy coming into town after a season on the range. It's not who they are.

Time of possession depends on many things, including number of drives, amount of time they hold on to the ball, etc. The D is tied for facing the 7th most drives, they're 2nd in the league in terms of yards allowed per drive, best in the league in fewest plays allowed per drive and 2nd in terms of time of possession allowed per drive. Fair enough, maybe, to say they're not great but they're damn good.

Good defenses have bad games. Hell, the 2000 Ravens defense allowed the Jags to score 36 on them and the Jets to put up 524 yards. The '85 Bears defense allowed the 2-14 Bucs to score 28 and the Dolphins 38, and they let the Vikes accumulate 445 yards. Am I saying the Bills defenses compare to those all-time greats? No, of course not. But you can always find a bad game or two. Saying a D didn't have a great game doesn't mean they aren't a great defense. And when a team like the Jets gets three drive starts in Buffalo territory, on the BUF 32 (field goal on a 3 yard drive), the BUF 46 (field goal on an 11 yard drive) and the BUF 8, (TD on an 8 yard drive), you can't put a lot of the blame on that defense for allowing 27 points. Not to mention that they started a 4th drive in Buffalo territory at the 45 and the Bills allowed them four yards and a punt. The defense wasn't the problem. I don't see them as the best in the league, but top five? Yeah, probably. The D has had the 30th best average position of drive start and handed back to the offense the 8th best. If you average all the drives out it doesn't mean all that much but what it means is the offense gets awful field position somewhat rarely while the defense gets it somewhat consistently. And those drive start stats (Football Outsiders) haven't even been updated to include the Jets game yet.

We are in a rebuild. And on top of that we were in desperate need of cleaning up our cap situation and accumulating enough draft capital to be sure we could bring in one of the top three QBs this year. So of course we let a bunch of guys go. That's what you do when you're forced into dumping future cap and it's what you do when you can get tradeable draft picks for the mediocre and wildly overpaid likes of Sammy with the idea of bringing in a Darnold, a Mayfield or an Allen. Hogan was let go a year before McDermott left Carolina. Matthews put up 282 yards here. Whereas this year with Carson Wentz throwing to him he's blowing the league away with 287 yards and 26.1 YPG. Who give a meh? The one guy in there who would have made a real difference was Woods, and he was let go for cap reasons. They wanted him back but couldn't afford him with the Whaley cap glut. And choosing Zay does NOT appear to be a "poor choice," by any means. We could possibly have made a better choice when you look back with hindsight, but that's true of nearly any draft decision looked back at with hindsight. You can examine the record of the best drafters ever and find hundreds of ways they could have picked better. The question is whether they picked well. While it's not certain yet, picking Zay looks to have been a pretty good decision, though we'll know more as we watch him develop.

Wins are team stats. Stafford and Rivers have been playing very well for a long time while surrounded by mediocrity. I wouldn't quite call either guy elite, But Rivers has been around the top six or so for a very long time.

And very little money. Whaley had them with a cap situation that looked like that of a team that was competing for a title and trying to make it in the last year or two of an old QB's slide into old age. And left them a lineup with a lot of holes and Tyrod Taylor as the closest thing we had to a franchise QB. So yeah, they could have brought in a good center. But that would have left them unable to bring in some of the guys that they did bring in. What Wood and Incognito leaving did absolutely hurt this FO, simply because it opened up two more big holes on a lineup that was already full of them and was on limited resources this year.

Nah. Sully was really good. Maiorana's OK, though I have never kept close track. And yeah, Sully was doom and gloom. Any sportswriter who was here during that full drought who wasn't pretty consistently writing doom and gloom was blowing smoke up the collective fan butt.