Thurman#1

Do you really think that if we say, "No," they just go hide in the basement and say, "Curses, foiled by the Bills"? They wouldn't. They'd have made the same offer, well, probably giving up less to the team at #29, or #30 and likely got them that way. Hell, he probably would still have been there at #32. No reason to think we'd have stopped them by refusing this offer, no reason whatsoever. So if they are going to get him anyway, much better that they only do it by paying us for the right to do it.

"Like" is probably too strong this early. But I've got zero problem with it. It's generally a smart play to trade back. You absolutely do if they'll almost certainly get the same help whether or not if's you that is helping them, and if helping them helps you more.

You don't trade back when you have one guy. You trade back when you have several guys and can be pretty sure at least one will be left. Yup. I liked Legette too. But - at least at #32 - Beane didn't.

Yeah? I'm fine. Lotta years before we know how this worked out, but again, trading up as high and giving up as much as they'd have had to get one of the top three never made economic sense. I thought they might go up a bit for BTJ, but I guess they didn't like him as much as many thought. I'm just waiting to see how this all turns out. Might be great. Anyway, Day Two just got a ton more interesting, from one pick to three.

Yup. We all get it. No argument to make, so you post a gif. It's apparently all you have. I'm sure the 12 year old TikTok girls think you're a genius. The Falcs went 13-3, then traded up by giving away a huge trove of picks to get Jones. Jones was sensational, but the lack of all those players had a huge effect. Even getting an HOF receiver didn't get them from 13-3 to a title having lost all the players they lost as compensation. In fact, in Julio's ten years with that team they only had four winning seasons. It's extremely questionable whether that was a smart trade.

Um, yes there is. In fact, it's the most reasonable stance in this case. If we hadn't traded that pick, they'd likely have traded to #29 or #30 and had to give up less and still got their guy. Or maybe even gotten him at #32 without giving anything up. No reason whatsoever to think that if we don't make that trade they don't get their Xavier anyway.

This. It's about every year. That's their goal, as they've said many many times. They want to be competitive every year. And there's every chance they'll be competitive this year as long as Allen is healthy. They did this because based on their board and how the draft fell, they felt this was the most effective use of their picks. Doesn't mean anyone else has to agree. But that's what they thought.

Even changing it from receiver to wide receiver it's still a bit questionable. Was Kelce still a #1 last year? With 984 yards and 5 TDs? He sure was for a long time, but the Chiefs won last year and I myself don't see a #1 on that 2023 Chiefs roster anywhere. Having a terrific TE really does help your odds. They're really productive, but much cheaper. That's probably why we grabbed Kincaid last year, to attempt following KC (and the Pats dynasty) in not needing a #1 WR if you have a terrific TE and a great QB who can spread things around. Was Edelman a true #1? I mean, he had three years over a thousand yards. An excellent receiver? Yeah. But a true #1? I say no. One of the best slots of all time? Yup, but again .... In 2018, New England's last title year, Edelman had 850 yards, Josh Gordon was second on the team with 720 and Gronk third with 682. The three combined for 12 TDs. Where was their #1? You don't need one, you just don't. Having one can really help, particularly if you're not overpaying. But you don't need one. Fair enough, though, that the term #1 is unclear. You're dead right about that.

Have more modern papers looking at more modern data found anything different? The answer of course is that they have not. They've universally found the same thing. Massey and Thaler themselves updated that paper in 2013 and found that the same biases towards overconfidence continue. FiveThirtyEight did a study in 2016. Again, much the same thing. The Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. It goes on and on. This has been a busy area for analysis and there just hasn't been much disagreement in modern studies. Teams have adjusted their behavior a bit due to analytics, but they're still making the same mistakes. The Pats aren't relevant here. Massey-Thaler (and all the rest) don't say that if you don't make massive trade-ups you will have excellent drafts. Since teams follow this strategy in overwhelming numbers, the idea is ridiculous. What they say is that if you don't follow their advice you are very likely to do worse than you would have. Not that if you do follow their advice you're guaranteed to draft very well. Teams are better evaluators now? Based on what? That's is at best very questionable. The draft isn't a crapshoot. But it really is still very difficult to predict who'll do well in pro football. Where's all the data that these great evaluators of today have raised the levels of success in first-rounders over the years since Massey-Thaler?

Well, it's certainly not impossible that one leads to the other. But Allen or not, that's not the way to bet. Improve the whole team. The passing game should certainly be part of that. But not to the point of trading away high-level picks. The way to improve is to have more picks, as many as possible at a high-level. As for your original intent, sorry about that. I was over-focused. Yeah, I agree that someone they take at #28 would likely be the #1 WR if he stays healthy and things go as expected. (Though sometimes guys get hurt and sometimes things don't go as expected.) But yeah, anyone they draft in the first would be expected to be the #1 next year.

True, random things aren't relevant. But looking at how similar strategies have worked in the past is extremely relevant. It just is. There's no randomness involved here. They're looking at whether to follow the exact same strategy that produced the - failed - Sammy Watkins trade and many others besides. Un-random. And again, there's no particular reason to think the Julio trade was a success. They got a terrific WR, an all-timer. And they went from a 13-3 record the year before they drafted him to never winning a Super Bowl and having far more losing years than winning years. They will draft based on the quality of the players this year. Of course. Very fair and completely correct. But if they are smart - and they are - they will strategize whether or not to make trades and particularly what kind of trades to make or not make, based on what has worked and what has very notably NOT worked in the past. Again, Massey-Thaler makes this clear. Massive trade-ups fail a lot more than they succeed.

Yes, Sammy gave the passing game a significant boost. But he didn't give the win-loss record a boost at all. They scored four more points the year they brought in Sammy than they did the year before. What happened that year is the D got better and they won three more games, moving up to 9-7 and not doing any better than that very mediocre 9-7 for Sammy's whole tenure. And the goal isn't to give the passing game a significant boost, or it shouldn't be. It should be to give the whole team a significant boost. They should draft a WR in the top two rounds. Maybe even do a trade-up of a few spots.

Sammy Watkins is absolutely a data point they've looked at. They'd be stupid not to, and they're not stupid. Is it one of the main things they're looking at, no, almost certainly not, but the likelihood of top ten receivers succeeding in justifying their draft spots completely is decent, but far from great. Same was true back when we traded up for Sammy. Which means that drafting a receiver high is a very reasonable move, but giving up a lot of valuable draft picks to do so is really really not. Julio Jones is also something they'll have looked at, but not a main focus. Julio is a case where they got that pick exactly right and it still didn't do enough to lift a 13-3 team enough to win a Super Bowl or even to being a really good team for most of Julio's stay there. The guys they lost the chance to pick in that trade appear to have hurt the team as much as having Julio helped it. Sammy is part of the the phenomenon that Massey and Thaler reported on, that GMs consistently over-rate their ability to correctly know who to draft, and that inability to correctly risks leads them to take risks that are stupid, specifically by giving up high round picks to move up to pick one guy. What they found is that moving up a bit doesn't seriously harm your odds, but that big move-ups should not be undertaken, as they significantly reduced the odds of draft success. The way to maximize your draft success is to maximize the number of darts you can throw, particularly with valuable big-time picks. There is an exception: trading way up for a possible franchise QB is worth doing because your odds of teams success without a franchise QB are so low. The same can't be said for other positions. And those guys are very very smart, they're not fans in Mom's basement. Thaler has won a Nobel Prize in behavioral economics, which is precisely the area they're looking at in this draft study. And all the studies - all of them - say the same. Drafting is too difficult. But these guys spend so much time studying and preparing and strategizing and discussing, that there tends to be a sense that with so much prep they gain more control. And you don't. These guys, NFL GMs, who know way more than the rest of us, still don't do well enough at picking to make really big trade-ups a good idea.

Sure. The question is whether they are already committed to the idea or whether they're trying to figure out how much it would cost to move up in case someone they like fell to, say, 20th. I'm pretty much completely sure they're kicking the tires on move-ups and finding out the values. Far less convinced that this is their number one choice, the way they want it to go. My bet is they're also checking out move-downs in case things fall the right way. That they want to be absolutely prepared no matter what happens. My guess is that the odds are probably somewhere around 30 - 60% that they move up a bit for a Thomas or a Legette or a Mitchell depending how things fall and how much they like whoever they really like. They move up a few spots with fair regularity.

Yup, this is what I think. He was excellent in college. That's the reason he's ranked so high. And McDermott loves guys with positional flexibility and uses them really well in his scheme to cross up offenses and make the D less predictable. But I also think that if he's the clear BPA at #28 and we're still there, we might trade back to try to produce a situation where a receiver or other position of need is the BPA at the new draft spot six to fifteen or so spots further back. If there are two or more guys left on the same draft tier at #28, they'll choose the one at a position of greater need.

Yup. This. And yeah, it'll level out in about two years.

Again, he didn't ask about "elite for his position." The question was this: "Name one player on offense or defense not named Josh Allen that any OC or DC on opposing teams is concerned about." And the Bills have guys teams are concerned about on offense. Wouldn't mind them getting some elite talent on offense. But great QBs can make offenses dangerous without a lot of marquee talent. In fact, that's the way the last two dynasties, including the Chiefs, have worked / are working. Kelce may have been elite, but is he still? He was still damn good last year, and that lateral last year was a thing of beauty, but would it be wildly surprising to see Kincaid outproduce Kelce this year? Next year? Not that that means we should avoid elite talent, obviously, on offense or defense. And giving Josh talent that can help him would by definition include the defense too, as the Chiefs showed. But it's harder to get elite talent in the late twenties when you're low on cap and trying to get back into good cap shape for the future. And more so when you need work at a lot of positions.

Don't be moving the bar. You asked about "concerned." Yes, those four guys concern DCs, as do others. Kincaid was a top ten producer at TE as a rookie who didn't get many targets early. Cook was 3rd in the league at yards from scrimmage, not including WRs. They worry people. A lot. Does anyone but Allen keep DCs up at night? It's impossible to know because they're already pacing late at night thinking of Allen. Kincaid was a top ten producer as a rookie at TE. We're a good-looking offense. The NFL knows it.

Yeah, that's idiocy. Concerned? Kincaid, Cook, Dawkins and Torrence, for four. Is it possible they win nine or less? Sure. If Allen is injured. If he's healthy it's still possible but a ten to twenty percent chance would be roughly the likelihood.

We're very very likely to be competitive. Very unlikely to be overlooked, I think. There absolutely are concerns, though some of that will change with the draft and with further FA moves. My guess is they pick at least one safety in the draft above the sixth round. We'll see.

Oh, absolutely. Relief? I'd guess mild relief mixed with knowing that things will get tougher, at least for a while, without having him on the field. Yeah, Allen is really great with the media, really really good. I believe I remember that when he was a kid his father would pretend to be a reporter and interview Josh and his brother to get them used to this. I suspect that's a good deal of the reason he's so good.

We've only got three picks above the fifth round now, before we start trading up. Some fifths and sixth are very likely to make it. Surely, you're right that not all eleven draftees will, but there's no reason to think we'll only keep three drafted rookies.

Yup. Two posts in a row from you with zero substance. Par for the course for you, Transie. The facts are inconvenient for you, so just distract.

Yeah, his headline was "A visual argument against trading down & for trading up." And then the post gave absolutely nothing about trading at all, addressing only whether guys drafted higher tend to succeed at higher (though not necessarily high) rates.

Wow. Intelligent response. So full of substance. What a surprise, a big nothing from you.