Thurman#1

"Anybody but Whaley right." Nope. Not anybody. Just McDermott. Two weeks into McDermott's term here the Pegulas had already switched control from Whaley to McDermott. What defence was McDermott coordinating after he was hired by the Bills? He wasn't. On your point about coordinated effort ... fair enough. I totally agree Whaley was here for a reason and had input. But it was extremely clear who pulled the trigger and ran the process, and it was not Whaley. That was McDermott's draft.

Not just win. Destroy. There was an earlier thread on that topic and several times it was absolutely assumed on that thread that Alabama would be the champion. I compared this year's Alabama team to one of their championship teams a few years ago and people were aghast that I would dare compare any Alabama team to this year's model.

He does indeed. But like Josh, he has a lot of time to do all that work. He and Josh are both young.

Got my Masters at UMASS. Now you've got me interested. Go Minutemen.

It's very true that we shouldn't give credit to Beane for McDermott's draft of 2017.

Exactly. Walker and Bell were awful at LT, though Walker had been pretty good at RT. This was another of the myths floating around, that he didn't want to be here. Which was nothing but sour grapes. He wanted his $10 mill a year, is what he wanted. He actually made it quite clear in his arrival speech in Philly that he had expected to spend his career in Buffalo and that he was totally shocked to be traded. "It blew my mind" was one of the things he said.

To correctly rehash all of this, the Bills paid him UDFA money and then put him at RT where he immediately was one of the two or three best in the league. They then gave him a contract based on RT salaries and literally a few games later they switched him to LT, a much higher-paid position, and expected him to be happy with his contract which was drastically underpaying him. He didn't say anything for a year and a half but at that point he began to complain, and it was very very reasonable that he did so. He was one of the two or three best LTs in the league instantly and was the lowest-paid LT on a non-rookie contract in the league. Of course he felt drastically underpaid. And no, he wasn't out of shape. Even Jauron, the coach at the time, admitted he'd been working out hard. What was true was that he wasn't in game shape. And there's no way to get in game shape when you hold out. You have to play football to get in football shape. This is another thing which has been said by nobody at the Bills. In fact, they said the opposite, that he'd worked out a ton and was in great shape, but not in football shape. But you still hear people saying what you said, that he'd been in bad shape. More, the fact that he was in good shape - but not good football shape - showed. The first four or five weeks he wasn't playing all that well, but after that he was once again absolutely dominating opponents. People forget that he was chosen for the Pro Bowl that year, and for good reason.

Russ was the guy who handled that negotiation. I never minded Russ much when he wasn't making personnel decisions, but he botched it. He released some statements to try to pressure Peters and it didn't work a bit. It only angered Peters and his management. Peters was worth every penny Philly paid. We should have paid him what they did. Bills fans after those public statements simply never liked Peters again. To the point that for months after he left people would tell you that Peters had said publicly that he took plays off. He simply hadn't said that, and no matter how many times people asked for a link and never got one most of the boards hated him so much they were unwilling to face the facts about what he'd actually said being very different from what had been perceived. Haven't seen the game yet, but Peters should have been a lifelong Bill. Particularly as they had a terrible time replacing him, with Bell, and a number of other poor attempts for three or four years of QBs taking far too many unexpected hits.

I would disagree. They're the Chicken Littles. It's who they are. It's what they do. We understand it. But we also understand that it doesn't make sense. Rebuilds are painful, especially so when at the same time you're rebuilding you're also dealing with a horrible salary cap situation. Pain and losses were to be expected this year. A lot of people didn't get that, but it was still true. Guess what the over-under was before the season. Six wins. https://www.oddsshark.com/nfl/nfl-over-under-win-totals This was always going to be a bad year. Now they've got a healthy cap situation and are going into Beane's second draft and McDermott's third season. The roster is starting to be mostly their own players and we're starting to see guys get comfortable in the system. Next year we should see some real improvement.

I don't vote in these things. He still has a lot to prove, but so far he looks better than anybody has since well before the drought.

Not much. He's a better runner than I thought. But I thought he was a guy who had a chance to be really good but that he would need a ton of development to get there and wasn't a sure thing. That's still what it looks like to me.

Yup. Good stuff. Talking about Malzahn dismissing him from the team at Auburn, Williams said, "He gave me chances to grow. And I made that mistake, so it's not his fault. It's my fault ... Coach Malzahn's one of the best coaches too. Only wanted the best for you. To become a man. And, and I wasn't a man ... I held back tears till I left. And all I did was shake his hand. I said "I wanna thank you for everything." Gotta like that. Impressive.

QB play in the passing game. It's something that happens in rebuilds, a lack of talent, often in several areas. Not everything is somebody's fault.

Yup. Even that year people not caught up in the saga with personal feelings voted him to the Pro Bowl. He played well here, including that year. I've always thought that the new administration would have loved having him but couldn't afford keeping him with the salary cap disaster Whaley left them with. If he'd really been that bad, Gilmore wouldn't have gotten the money he got, and especially from one of the most notorious cheapskates in the league. Bills fans always tend to have a sour grapes attitude towards guys who leave or who they think might leave.

People don't often let go guys they think are #1 WRs. So yeah, I'm not expecting someone to be playing like one next year. But if we draft one early, we might get lucky and have him become one in 2 or 3 years. I wouldn't find that so impossible.

Progress. It really is that simple and that imprecise. Progress.

Your post says less about Cousins than it does about you. It says that you don't know enough to know when to wait. 'Cause after one year we don't know if the Vikes will ever have much success with Cousins. Maybe they won't. But maybe they will. And it says you don't fully understand what causes team success. Because while a QB is indeed the most important player on a team by far, every guy is important and even a very good QB doesn't win alone. Winning is a team thing. The Vikes are 30th in running. 30th. Tied for 21st in yards per carry, tied for 27th in rushing TDs and tied for 11th in fumbles. On defense they were still pretty good but not the monsters they were last year. If they'd had last year's D, they'd likely be in the playoffs. They haven't been able to be successful throwing long, as the Skins were often able to do with Cousins. They'll have to figure out why that is and work on it in the offseason. But 30 TDs put them 10th in the league while 10 INTs had them tied for 10th-lowest in INTs, with New England. Cousins was taking care of the ball while still being effective in moving it and scoring. The Vikes passing offense was good this year. Not great, but it was the first year and they could easily be more successful as a team next year. This wasn't all on Cousins, not even most of it. Of course, it's not all off him either. He gets his share of the blame. But not all of it. They may have overpaid him. That's what it takes these days, unfortunately. But if they get a title during that contract, it'll have been worth every penny.

In the last four games, which are 26.66% of the 15 games we've played, Zay has caught 29.9% of his yardage (167 of 559 yards) and 60% of his TDs (3 of 5). How is that "virtually disappeared from Bills offence"? It's increasing his production. Oh, and I don't know where Gilmore was every play or anything like that. But I do know Stephon was covering Zay on the incompletion in the first drive of the 3rd quarter, the incompletion at 11:00 in the 4th, and the completion at 4:37 in the 4th.

Your observations there are subjective. More to the point, he's a second year guy coming from a small school. He was likely to require time. Turns out he did. He started very slow this year due to the injury but has performed quite a bit better after getting healthy. I didn't claim that he was going to be a #1 or anything. But the stats show he's already producing at a rate that makes him a #2. With poor and very inconsistent QB passing play and not much of a run game to take the pressure off the pass game.The lack of talent on this offence holds all offensive performance down. So the answer to your question is this, Scott ... In what world does Zay look like he'll prove to be good value at that spot? In this world. As his QB play gets better, as he learns and improves, there's a good chance it will happen in this very world. Great value? I didn't say that.

Receivers can only catch the ball when their QB throws it to them. The Bills are fifth in the league in percentage of runs per offensive play. They want to run. They throw more when they're behind, that's the kind of team they are. The Bills threw 103 passes in first quarters, 115 in 2nd quarters, 107 in 3rd quarters and 145 in 4th quarters. If you're on the Bills this year and you're a receiver and they throw to you a lot, you're most likely going to have a lot of your catches late in the game.

The fact that you have to go back to his college days proves how poor your point is. College ceases to matter once you're on an NFL roster. Zay's stats - in the NFL - do show he's a #2.

Yup. It's his second year and he's been thrown to by four different QBs, none of who are very good at this point. He's the best WR on the team and thus gets more focus from the defences. He's still developing and will likely continue to get better. Yup, 52nd among WRs in yardage, 44th in receptions, tied for 26th in TDs. He's a #2 right now, though not one of the better #2s. But again, he's a 2nd year man with issues at QB and OL. He'll almost certainly improve.

Nonsense. There's almost always someone better you could have picked. Picks aren't judged as to whether you got the best possible guy in hindsight. They're judged by whether you got good value. Looks like Zay will turn out to be good value at that spot.

I have little faith in your ability to scout offense if you think that anyone can already know that St. Brown has #1 ability. The guy has 328 yards and zero touchdowns while being thrown to by Rodgers. And it's not like he's being kept out of the lineup by great guys ahead of him. He's behind Davante Adams and ... the #2 receiver in yards is Valdez-Scantling, another rookie. You also don't know that Ray Ray won't be good. Like St. Brown he's a rookie. In neither case do the teams know what they have and in neither case are the odds very high for a long career, much less becoming a #1.

Hunh? #2 guys ARE starters. Do you mean #2 guys are getting paid like #1s? If that's what you mean, I'd disagree. There are only 13 guys getting paid over $13 mill a year average. And most of them are #1s or look to get there soon, though Sammy Watkins and Jarvis Landry are in there and I think both of them are overpaid. Agree with the rest of your post, though.