Thurman#1

... or one season.

Perhaps it's not so much the visitors aren't faring well on Thursday nights. Perhaps it's just a matter of better teams winning. Dallas beating the Saints was the first game on Thursday this year where Vegas didn't correctly pick the game. The eleven home teams that won were all favored. So were the two road teams that won. The better teams won. Thursday has got nothing to do with it. It comes down to Dallas doing a terrific job on defence, physically disrupting pass routes and pressuring Brees. Anyone see any major upsets here? Games that come down to disrupted routines? ATL @ PHI - Philly was a home favorite, and won BAL @ CIN - Cincy were one point home favorites and won NYJ @ CLE - Browns were a home favorite and won MIN @ LAR - Rams 6.5 point home faves and won IND @ NE - Pats home favorites won PHI @ NYG - Philly a road favorite won DEN @ ARI - Denver a small road fave wins MIA @ HOU - Texans 7 point home faves won OAK @ SF - 49ers home favorites won CAR @ PIT - Steelers 3.5 point home faves won GB @ SEA - Seahawks 2.5 point home faves won ATL @ NO - Saints 13 point home faves NO @ DAL - Saints 7 point road faves lose

Miami. They never seem to play with heart and I honestly don't think that's me hating them. In the old days they were a great watch but not for fifteen years or so. I like the Bills this year but for a lot of the last 10 - 15 years I watched only because I was a fan of the team. The Eagles till they got Wentz. The Niners for years till they got Garoffolo. I've always liked watching Larry Fitzgerald, so I can't agree about the Cards.

That's an interesting story about Auburn and the donor. Nuts. Completely nuts, but that's the culture down there. "ingest challenge"? Do you mean biggest challenge? Autocorrect? The 2012 team has plenty to do with this group. Same coach. Same facilities. They won a national championship, which this group has yet to do. They run in Saban's system and both groups beat a few very difficult opponents they also both played a bunch of patsies like The Citadel. Same state, same nuts atmosphere. They had four guys go in the first and five in the top 35 picks in the 2012 draft. They have a ton in common. You're not being conservative. When you are looking at an extremely complex system with a track record of ten or twelve years and you're trying to look three years into an unknowable future with millions of possible variables ... guessing that the future will be significantly higher than the highest past result isn't being conservative. It's sticking your neck out. And no, Jerry Jeudy isn't the best receiver in the country. That would be Antonio Brown, probably. Or maybe Julio Jones or Adam Thielen or Michael Thomas. A few other guys might be in the discussion, but not Jerry Jeudy. After Jeudy becomes eligible and gets drafted and spends months of OTAs and full-time study rather than working around the classwork which is required of him now and goes through training camp he might become a very fine receiver. It probably won't happen in his first game, and certainly wouldn't if his first game happened, say, sometime in the next few weeks and his QB was dealing with a pro DL like ours while being protected by guys like he has in front of him now, OLs with a lot of potential and no knowledge of the pro game. And while there is a limited "make the problem go away" factor, the NCAA has a say in this. Big schools have had NCAA problems before. And programs that seemed all-powerful (Miami in the eighties and very early 90s and then again in the early noughties) were brought down to earth. Unpredictable stuff happens. Injuries happen. Drug scandals happen. Crimes happen. Sexual accusations happen. Stuff happens.

Yup. And probably a couple of years down the road we'll know how both of those comparisons panned out. So far, JuJu has had a lot faster start in much better conditions and Edmunds looking slower-developing than Vander Esch but with as much or more potential. Too early to know how either turned out but the JuJu comparison looks more likely to come out Pittsburgh's way in the long run. And the long run is all I care about in the present situation. But as long as Zay lives up to his draft spot this won't be anything to hold against the FO. And he does look like he's beginning to be worth the pick.

I think he missed the words, "on the field too early" rather than "terrible." Or "Poorly handled", maybe. Fifth round QBs or guys in that area don't generally do much, but when they do it's generally because they're allowed to sit and figure the NFL out. Look at Brunell. Yeah, you get occasional Bradys who only sat for a year and a half or more or even Steve Grogans who played his first year, but generally with guys like Gannon, Rypien, Brad Johnson, Theismann, Hasselbeck, Trent Green ... I like McDermott and Beane so far, they seem like smart cookies who are mostly making good moves. But it would be hard to argue they handled the QB situation well. Other than drafting Allen and giving us at least a chance in the future, anyway. In any case, Milano is looking like a great pick.

Occasionally for Murph's interviews. Otherwise almost never, and I was a very frequent visitor there. It really wasn't. It had good folks bad folks and lots of pretty solid folks. Much the same as here.

I'm really NOT making your point, dude. You're picking the best possible example, the last three years. It's just as legit to pick, say the 2012 championship team that had 25 Alabama guys drafted the next three years. You just don't know this. You don't, and you're kidding yourself if you think you do. Picking the highest of all possible past outcomes, and then saying the future will be higher ... simply isn't a conservative way to make a prediction. You said you made a conservative prediction. You didn't. 30+ is certainly possible but if you'd bet your house on that ("any amount of money") you're very clearly not being conservative. And to repeat for like the third time ... the most mature of the group will be pros ... a year from now and after six to seven months of training and learning virtually full time in the pro system. The next oldest group will be pros two years from now and the rest will be three or more years from now. They're not pros now. As of now they've been identified - many or most of them - as having future pro potential. Many of them will be busts or guys that don't make a team in the long term, history shows. You make a good point about the nutrition, that's interesting, but it's a small factor in all of the mass of advantages that NFL players have. And no, football isn't their life, these college players. They still have to take and pass classes. Yeah, football's the most important part of their life, for many or most of them anyway, but they still have to do far more off-point stuff than pros do and have far more limitations on what football activities they can do. NCAA rules allow athletes to spend no more than 20 hours a week on required athletic activities, "Countable Athletically Related Activity". Yes, some activities are not counted, so that's not a strict cap on all football activities, of course. But NFL limitations are not nearly as restrictive. Here's the offense and ages/years: Jerry Jeudy 19 true soph Henry Ruggs true soph Devonta Smith 165 pounds , 20 true soph Jonah Williams Jr. 21 this week true junior Deonte Brown red-shirt soph Ross Pierschbacher red-shirt senior Alex Leatherwood true sophomore Jedrick Wills true soph (TE - Hback) Irvin Smith Jr true junior (TE) Hale Hentges true senior Tua Tagovailoa 20, true soph Damien Harris 21 true senior That's the offense. It was interesting to me to find that it's not easy to find ages for some of these guys. But you can still get a sense by their year where they are. Plenty of these guys aren't even eligible by age and college experience for the NFL. They're young. EDIT: found a much quicker way to find this, so I thought I'd do the defense too. Buggs soph transfer Williams red-shirt soph Davis true junior Jennings red-shirt junior Miller red-shirt senior Wilson true junior Moses true soph Smith junior transfer Thompson red-shirt junior McKinney true sophomore Surtain true freshman Carter true junior Again, young. Their QB is very young and an NFL team would doubtless throw extremely complex defenses at him and pressure him with a ton of stunts blitzes and complex and shifting coverages. When he's been in the NFL a couple of years he may well begin to be able to handle that. Not now, though. I'd say 50 - 6.

You're right, Gunner, I'm not making the argument you refer to in your first paragraph. But what I am arguing goes beyond your summation. Yeah, smarts and experience are a huge advantage. But so is the simple maturation of human bodies, not to mention pure strength being a result of consistent effort over time ... and time is something these college guys have had an absolute ton less of than NFL guys. More, the NFL is able to put far more complex systems into use, particularly on offense, but on defense too. What's the average age of NFL players? I'm sure I could find different numbers, because it doubtless goes up and down a fraction each year, but in this story it's reported as 26.6 and that's probably pretty close to what you'd find in nearly any year. http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/20733853/the-average-age-esports-versus-nfl-nba-mlb-nhl Now look at the average year of a college roster and don't count the guys who never play. Obviously I can't come up with an exact number on this but it's probably somewhere around 19, maybe a lowish 20. Take the starters and that would probably trend a bit higher. There are a few guys who take a red-shirt year and stay on a team for five years but that's just not a common enough move to sway the average much, I think. So, an average college team's starters would average 20, maybe? Am I wrong? Now put 26.6 year olds against 20 year olds, both on a consist weight program. Who's going to be stronger? And will it be a little bit stronger or very significantly stronger? Look at the ages of Olympic champions. It differs from sport to sport and between genders as well, but there are very few champions who are college age. That relates to strength, though it also relates to time under coaching and many factors, but the point stands. One of many studies here: https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/61889/1/jhse_Vol_11_N_1_31-41.pdf Throw in the fact that as you say the pros'll have a ton more experience and will be operating in much more complex systems due to the inexperience of college guys and the much more limited amount of time available for coaching and learning and NFL coaches simply have an awful lot more they can put into their playbooks and systems in terms of complexity and detail. Fair enough that this doesn't have to be Buffalo. A game between Alabama and any bottom-level pro team would not be even slightly close.

No, he doesn't bypass losses by pointing to a process. But neither does McDermott. Does Belichick have a process and talk about it? Um, yeah. "We've just gotta keep stringing days together, take advantage of our opportunities to go out there and improve, and trust the process." - Bill Belichick. https://www.patriots.com/video/bill-belichick-8-3-trust-the-process Check out 00:53 in the video. That definition - bypassing losses by pointing to a process - is *****. That's not what the process is about. It's where we often hear the word, because when you're winning people ask you about other things and you want to talk about other things. Good teams and players have a process. When you're losing, you want to tell people what you're doing to change that. And there are a lot of ways to say the same thing. Working the process is one, but you could as easily say, "We're on the path to success," or "We're working on consistent improvement," or "We're following the plan," or "We've got a long way to go, but we're going," or a million other variations. That's not an excuse or a way to bypass things. It's telling people what you're doing. There's nothing wrong with it. Does Belichick have a process? Yup. Does he bypass losses? Yup, and wins too. He's always on to the next game, which is part of his process, and really the process of any franchise that wins consistently. Tim Ferriss: LeBron, if you look for instance at the big names that came into the league at the same time that you did, it's staggering to see how few of them are still playing, and yet here you are playing as the best in the NBA. Are there any particular approaches you've taken or things that you attribute that to? LeBron James: Well, I can't speak on any other players or anybody who came in around my time or a little bit after me or not to far from when I came in but I know me personally, I've just been very consistent with the process. I've been very consistent with training my body, rehabbing my body ... https://content.production.cdn.art19.com/episodes/b97b91ba-c496-46a0-8e2b-08544e9c0f15/38dce2e66bba2b23bdf56993e60c9e75da8eca0bb758f9633a0ee72f82226bc92b0b4fe63e736798f6d6623d4eee7cb604ec189d276f0e98a40206b658f44854/TheTimFerrissShow_Lebron James_.mp3 Go to 16:30 in the audio. Only in Buffalo do people associate "the process" with McDermott.

They are certainly the best program in college for producing NFL guys. No question. And more so on defense. But we're talking offense also, not just defense. But just looking at your list and how those guys were earlier in college: Mosley was terrific in 2013 and 2012. 2011 ... really not so much. Clinton-Dix had 5 INTs in his last year, and 0 in his other college year of play. Landon Collins had 99 tackles in his final year, and 3 INTs, 68 tackles and 2 INTs in his 2nd last year nad 17 tackles and 0 INTs in his first Ragland had 102 tackles and 2.5 sacks as a senior, 93 tackles and 1.5 sacks as a junior and 17 tackles and 0 sacks as a soph. A'Shawn Robinson seems to have been almost as good a player as a soph as he was later. Jarran Reed started for two years and was very good in both. Cyrus Jones didn't play defense in 2012, had a limited impact in 2013 and played quite well in 2014. Allen played all four years at Alabama and was an awful lot better the last two. "The first 3 on it [Mosley, Clinton-Dix and Collins] were all pro-bowlers within 3 years," you say. Yeah, within three years, but that's within four years of their last year in college. Only Mosley was a first year Pro Bowl guy. Clinton-Dix played in all 16 games but started 10, picking up a bunch of tackles but few impact plays as a rookie, 1 INT, 0 forced fumbles, 1 sack, 1 tackle for loss and 2 QB hits. 6 passes defensed. And the Clinton-Dix in this theoretical Bills game was a year younger and less prepared than the rookie Clinton-Dix. Same with SS Landon Collins as a rook. A bunch of tackles but few impact plays. How would he have performed in this theoretical game as a college soph or junior? A'Shawn Robinson started five games as an NFL rookie. Jarran Reed looks very good this year in Seattle but as a rookie he was mostly promising. Is Marlon Humphrey any good? He's started 11 games in his two NFL years. I honestly don't know. You folks tell me. Jonathan Allen had the Lisfranc injury in Week 6 of his rookie year so it's hard to say what he could have done. Decent this year, but also seems a bunch improved over last year. Reuben Foster? Ryan Anderson hasn't started one game in his two years. That's the first half of your list, in order. How do they do as rookies? Now how would they have done a year before that? Or two or three years before that? So you wouldn't argue that Alabama doesn't produce fine players. They do. But plenty of them take a while to get started and many started a year or two or three at Alabama and weren't the same early in their careers. I may not be disagreeing with your main point much, but I thought your list was a good starting point to discuss the time it takes to improve, both in college and in the NFL.

No, I'm very much NOT making your point. They have 12 there, an all-time high and very possibly an outlier. And of those 12 more than half have not been able to get regular NFL snaps yet. And while more may become that good next year and more yet the year after ... very few guys who are younger than the guys coming out would be ready to play against NFL players right now. Those guys right now are 19 and 20 years old. They're not ready. Size? Yeah, Bama guys are NFL-standard mostly. Strength? Nah. The NFL guys have nutrition coaching and a year in an NFL strength coaching program and they're not 19 and 20 years old. Expensive strength coaches are nice, but Bama guys are mostly on meal programs and studying for classes while Bills guys eat at the facility and don't worry about anything but football, and that's all beyond the college guys simply having had years less of a lifting history. They don't have to spend time taking classes and preparing for tests. NFL guys have several major advantages over college guys in terms of strength even if the college guys have the genetics to catch up when given the same time and advantages given the NFL guys. Your number (30+) isn't conservative. But let's say it's right on. Being on an NFL roster doesn't mean you're good enough to start or even be any good. Take the 2014 draft. Eight Bama guys drafted. CJ Mosley and Ha Ha Clinton-Dix are fine players. Do you want the other six to be your starters? Cyrus Kouandjio, WR Kevin Norwood, DE Ed Stinson, QB AJ McCarron, S Vinnie Sunseri and JE Jeoffrey Pagan? Or 2013: Dee Milliner, Chance Warmack, DJ Fluker and Eddie Lacy are all solid guys, though not outstanding by any means, though there were three guys there in the top eleven picks. Do you want the other five guys starting? LB Nico Johnson, G Barrett Jones, DT Jesse Williams, DE Quinton Dial and TE Michael Williams? Or 2012: Trent Richardson, Mark Barron, Dre Kirkpatrick and certainly Dont'a Hightower are solid players. LB Courtney Upshaw? DT Josh Chapman? CB Dequan Menzie? TE Brad Smelley? Now if that 2014 team is playing an NFL team, you have Mosley and Clinton-Dix as seniors .... Milliner, Warmack, Fluker and Eddie Lacey a year early and Richardson, Barron, Kirkpatrick and Hightower two years early. And the others. I may have missed a player or two there but most of them didn't pan out and certainly wouldn't have even done that well a year or two early. Sorry, man, but it's not even close. They would be lucky to score a single TD or force more than maybe a single punt.

No, going by my definition, every player is a player-first player on this issue, an issue that teams are well aware has nothing to do with character. Virtually every single guy in the league, the few exceptions being guys looking at third and fourth contracts who've already made huge money, like Brady, or guys who will give a small hometown discount because their family loves the community and doesn't want to move. That's pretty much the only players who won't do everything they can to maximize their contracts. The guys that McDermott and Co. don't want because of character are guys who can't show up on time, locker room lawyers, guys who piss and moan all the time, guys who don't practice hard, guys who set up cliques in the locker room tearing the team apart, guys who commit domestic violence or drunk driving, guys who don't study the playbook or have serious alcohol or drug issues ... That's what people mean when they say "character issues." Do you go to your employers each year and say, "Hey, I know I'm doing a great job for you guys, but don't pay me as much as I'm worth, OK? I just want to support the company"? Do you do that? Of course not. And that's essentially what you're expecting these guys to do. This simply isn't a character issue. Kid yourself if you must, but that's the way it is ... they're all looking to get as much money out of their very short careers as possible ... and for good reason. Thanks. And fair enough that you don't always agree with me. I work hard to align myself with football wisdom and to look at things coolly and dispassionately rather than in a knee-jerk fashion. But particularly when making predictions, we're all wrong plenty of the time, and certainly that includes me many times.

Haven't started to look yet, but if this guy's a good OT prospect, that would be a very reasonable way to go, IMHO.

Defences still absolutely make a difference. And nobody can stop those offences? That's just wrong on the face of it. The Saints? The Ravens held them to 24 and the Browns held them to 21. The Vikes held them to 30, seven of which came on a pick-six, so the offence only scored 23. The Rams? The Broncos held them to 23 points. And the Pack held them to 29, of which two came on a safety and three came on a field goal on a 27 yard drive that started on the Green Bay 40 and went to the Green Bay 13. KC? The Cardinals allowed 26 points, and one of the field goals came on a drive that started on the Cardinals 38 yard line and went 11 yards to the 27 before the field goal. Their final TD came on a 31 yard drive following a Rosen INT. The Broncos only allowed them 27 points, with the final TD happening with only 1:39 left in the game. These teams, like any offence, can be stopped. It's really hard to do, but it will get easier late in the year against the good teams in the cold. And you don't have to go back far to find defences winning Super Bowls. As a matter of fact, in the last five years, the Super Bowl winning defences were higher-ranked, on the average, than the offences of those same teams.

Knee-jerk reactions feel so good, don't they? But they also drastically raise your chances of being wrong. We don't know yet whether there has been a miss. In a couple of years we'll most likely finally have a clear picture of how good our present coach and QB are. At that point this discussion may or may not make any sense. I do like Reich. But any coach with Luck at QB is going in with a huge advantage. At some point it may make sense to have this discussion.

To repeat, if you define a "team first" guy as a guy who won't do the best he can to get paid as much as he can in his second contract, then there are probably 40 or 50 in the whole league. In terms of pay, the interests of players and their teams are directly opposed. Teams understand this. They don't like it, but they understand it. Every player is their team's antagonist in player negotiations. That's the way it is. The difference for Bell is that he's got a lot of leverage. I don't like the way he's handled this. He should've come back and gotten the season at the deadline. It was dumb for him, IMHO. But Pittsburgh has placed the franchise tag on him two years in a row, and nobody blamed them for that. They were trying to screw him, to get him for less than his value. As they should. So he tried to get his value and got angry at Pittsburgh. That's the way these things go. The minute a guy like this is signed to a contract, he's an asset again. He's not anti-team. Character problems are guys who show up late all the time, or don't study the playbook, or try to talk down the coach and the organization in the locker room, or don't give their all in practice or games, or commit crimes outside the facility. Those are character problems. Trying to get all the money you're worth in a legal way isn't a problem. It's what America is built on. Teams don't consider those guys character problems. They do consider them hard to sign, and they do have problems with negotiating with them. But they are teams guys the instant you sign them. So yeah, if the Bills were willing to spend the money to sign him - and I don't think they will or should - then yeah, this would indeed likely be the "character" kind of player this front office is looking for.

Salary isn't a character issue. Being about football first doesn't mean you have to bend over at contract time to show you're a team guy. Look at what Carolina did with Kuechly. His contract signed before the 2017 season is still the highest ILB contract in football, about 20% higher than the number two guy, Bobby Wagner. Fans tend to get all angry about guys who won't take a discount. Front offices tend not to think of those players as bad guys. They're just guys who price themselves out of what the team will pay.

It's not how much elite or potentially elite skill players go for. It's how much elite or potentially elite wide receivers go for. Gurley's contract is the best WR contract ever, certainly as far as average salary and probably in most ways. But he still falls almost $2 mill short of Sammy territory. And while people keep assuming that Sammy is potentially elite, he never manages to produce a season anywhere remotely near elite. So Sammy got an elite contract with production that shows no sign of reaching top 25 levels, much less elite levels. So yeah, Bell would produce more than Sammy but just because Sammy has managed to get overpaid every single step along the way doesn't mean we should do the same for Bell. There is a legit argument that Bell could be worth the best RB contract ever. But our GM and coach come from a salary cap background that was very conservative. They talk conservative and they have acted conservative. I suppose there's a possibility they break all their tendencies, but I'm betting it is a very low possibility. Our FO does seem to want team-first guys. But the general definition of team-first guys isn't a guy who wants to maximize his contract in the year when he has the most leverage. That's like 1% of the players in the league. They virtually all want to get what they can in their second contract, the exceptions being guys whose families are glued into the community and will thus give a hometown discount. And even those guys are few and far between. Bell has been a team guy. The Steelers have loved him till now, and I bet you would find that OBD'd love to get Bell, but not at that salary. Much the way that Pittsburgh feels, really.

It's a good question. My guess is that he won't look as slow as he has recently every time out, but he also won't look as quick as he used to very often. I think this is the first sign of the inevitable.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying you don't get to switch guys all into one year and then take that figure and pretend it's a per year figure. It's not. Seriously? That second paragraph? That's a joke.

This discussion comes in the context of how Alabama, the college team, would do against the Bills. And it is too early to know whether those guys will be legitimate NFL players, even the guys who are starting. Plenty of young guys start early and don't pan out, getting replaced a year or three down the line. It might be a trend. You can say so a few years down the line. Right now what you've got there is a guess. Not an unreasonable guess, but a guess. And yes, they are one of the most talented college teams ever. College teams. And yes, they would be a pushover for an NFL team, bottom feeder or not. They won the title last year and only five guys got significant NFL snaps this year. And that comes after a year of professional development.

Quinnen Williams counts next year, or whenever he gets drafted. If you want to look at all of this year's players - regardless of what year they'll be drafted in - and then NOT multiply that by several years of prospects, great, look at Williams and Raekwon. But you don't get to throw Williams in a year earlier then say my per year calculations are off. If you throw Williams in this year, he's out of next year. Same with Raekwon. "It's unlikely that there are more than one or two starters on this year's team that wouldn't at least be considered viable NFL prospects if they were draft eligible now"? Boy, that's very questionable. Possible prospects a year or two down the road when they're actually draft eligible? Maybe, though even that's pushing it. Guys who are likely to start consistently in the NFL for years? "4 or 5 sure-fire first round picks"? That I'll buy. But 4 or 5 sure-fire first round picks ... as rookies ... and actually a year before that? Please. NFL teams would spend hours on evaluating these guys and drafting them and developing them in hopes that they eventually become excellent starters. But in terms of snagging them right off the college field and plugging them in against NFL players? Teams would smile. Robert Foster and Levi Wallace? Both guys who could easily not be in the league in three years? I hope I'm very wrong about that, but those guys still have a ton to prove this year. Take them last year without the training camp and the year of development and put them in a game against pros? Again, please. The QB is the best in the country? Yeah, probably. How are last year's top four QBs doing in the pros? They're finding their feet. Put them in an all-college lineup against an NFL team and it'd look far worse. How did Wentz do as a rookie? Goff? And again, 10 is an outlier. They've averaged less in the Saban years, even throwing out his first three drafts.

It isn't like Alabama gets 12, or even 10 guys drafted every year. Here are the Saban years with the number of guys drafted. Obviously the first few classes were graduating guys not recruited by Saban. But what this shows is that 12 and 10 are outliers. 2018: 12 2017: 10 2016: 7 2015: 7 2014: 8 2013: 9 2012: 9 2011: 5 2010: 7 2009: 4 2008: 0 2007: 3 While certainly possible that they get 12 or so drafted the next couple of years, it's absolutely not conservative. Looking at the 12 guys they had drafted this year. Here is each guy, with how many snaps he has played so far in his rookie year, with STs snaps not included. 11 S Minkah Fitzpatrick (528 snaps) 13 DT Daron Payne (484 snaps) 22 LB Rashaan Evans (298 snaps) 26 WR Calvin Ridley (396 snaps) 93 S Ronnie Harrison (186 snaps, 29.1%) 114 DE Da'Shawn Hand (381 snaps) 118 CB Anthony Averett (22 snaps) 172 P JK Scott (punter, 91 STs snaps) 197 LB Shaun Dion Hamilton (0 snaps) 215 C Bradley Bozeman (103 snaps) 236 RB Bo Scarbrough (0 snaps) on his second team's practice squad 246 DT Joshua Frazier (0 snaps) free agent So, that's five guys with significant snaps, unless you want to count Harrison wtih 29.1% of his possible defensive snaps. I guess you could count the punter, too, if you wanted. And each lower class that would also be playing against the Bills would be composed of younger guys with less experience.

Yup. This is correct. Alabama's the best college team, by far. And how many guys from there make the pros each year? Out of 22 starters? Less than 10? That leaves 12 or more guys out there not good enough to be on a pro roster. And that ignores the fact that outside of the first couple of rounds not many college guys can be productive as rookies, even after a training camp and maybe months of combine prep where they quit school to work harder. The Bills or any other team would absolutely kill them.