Thurman#1

Hi, I'm an apple. Would you like to compare me to an orange. One team is in a rebuild. The other made the AFC championship last year. Since sucking is part of a rebuild, you don't get punished for suckage unless your owner has zero patience or just doesn't get it. Neither of these seems to be the case with the Pegulas. The Jags were expected to be good. There'll be some kind of consequences. Hard to say what, though. As for who will be gone next year, I think they might keep Dareus. He's wildly underperforming when recieving $16 mill a year, but keeping him next year would only cost $10 mill. In other words you'd be getting Lotulelei-like performance, but at a Lotulelei-like price. Not bad if they feel he still fits as part of this defense. My guess is they'll give Marrone another year. Hackett will likely depend on what Marrone thinks. The problem with the Jags is that they're already $12 mill OVER the cap next year. There'll be salary cap cuts somewhere and it would be hard to defend just kicking all of the salaries down the road after a year like this one. They'll have to cut some guys they would rather not. Dareus could easily be one of them, I'd guess.

I like Alex Smith, but who Mahomes sat behind is entirely immaterial to the effect sitting had on him. Probably the four best QBs in the league are Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes. None of them were top five picks. They were very different types and were chosen in different areas, 6th round, 2nd round, #24 and #10. They did NOT all "have the luxury" of sitting behind a great player who will teach him everything or having "2 brilliant offensive coaches." One of the few things they do have in common is that they all sat out for their rookie year. Probably the four best in the league and they all sat as rookies and let the game come to them. And yeah, learning from mistakes is really important. So is learning from doing the right thing. But it doesn't have to be your own mistakes and good plays you learn from. It's perfectly possible to learn from other people's mistakes. You can learn reading defences from watching film ... in the early days of your career, it's probably far more effective as you can concentrate on what the defence is doing and what you can learn from it rather than worrying about what you need to know to start the next week.

Yeah, they could've. But it's not like St. Brown's been terrific for Green Bay with Rodgers throwing to him. 162 yards. Is he significantly better than Foster? You can't fill all your roster holes in one year.

If by "a highly productive offence," you mean the 16th best offence in the league, then yeah, that's what they did. They caused it to drop quite a lot ... in a rebuild. By the way, what did they do to the defence, which was ranked 19th that year? How's that going these days? You didn't mention that, for some reason.

God, I hope not. 500:1 shot, IMO, but I sure hope we don't win another game. Making the playoffs and being crushed the minute we play a good team is nothing to be especially happy about. It would only mean a few more players unavailable to us in every round of the draft. Did Mahomes need to play all those games during his rookie year? Time on the bench can be just as useful as time in the game, especially if you're really not yet sure what's going on around you and even more especially if you have some mechanical habits that need to be grooved but won't if you're spending your time during the week memorizing game plans and your times during the game trying to survive and often going back to old habits.

No they certainly did not have a valid argument. Yes he was bad. No, demanding dropping a WR after his first year makes zero sense at all. The rest of your post is right on, though.

Hey Scott, yeah, after next year the pressure will be on. But as long as we see improvement, they'll very likely get a year after that even if they're still losing. And yeah, after the 2000 season we rebuilt. Didn't work out. They really didn't have a choice with that one as Butler put the team in such serious salary cap jail that they had to do a massive personnel dump. Same with Nix, yes, that was a rebuild too. In neither case did we get a QB to give the team a real chance to build into a powerhouse. Nix did a great job on defense but not having high draft picks hurt badly. But no, Jauron was a reload after 2005, not a rebuild. They thought they could win quickly with him, but turned out to be more seven-win seasons. Yes, ineptitude and bad decisions. And thinking a rebuild was all that was necessary has been a consistent bad decision. What are these? 8 3 8 6 9 5 7 7 7 6 4 6 6 6 9 8 7 9 Win totals since 2000. And what you see is a team that never got good enough to get into the playoffs except by lucking in last year and never got bad enough to use the draft to get some major impact players, particularly at QB but at the other impact positions either. It's the record of a team reloading and reloading and reloading. Two minor rebuilds, neither deep enough nor painful enough. And in the years they did have a good pick, they picked Mike Williams and Marcell Dareus. Lose one more game in 2010 and we can pick Von Miller instead of Dareus. Two more losses and we are in tiebreakers with Carolina for a shot at Cam Newton. No QB, no gold ring. No rebuild, far lower chance at a QB. As for your opinion that McDermott and Beane don't look better, I couldn't disagree more. Other new regimes have never admitted the bad shape they were in. And they never worked things to get a guy like Josh Allen here. I'm not convinced yet on Allen, far from it, but he at least stands a chance of being a franchise guy. The parade of Tyrods and decrepit Fluties and Bledsoes, the Rob Johnsons and Alex Van Pelts and Cassels and Ortons and Holcombs and Losmans, the Trents and the Fitzies and the Manuels ... has at least finally been noticed and they brought in a guy who at least has a legitimate chance to break that horrible skein of unimpressiveness. Yeah, it took trading away a few guys they probably would rather have kept, all things being equal. And yeah, they got rid of a lot of guys to get them back to cap health. If Allen becomes a franchise guy it will have been worth every extra loss. But their drafts so far look excellent, they're back in good cap shape starting next year and it happened extremely quickly, and they at least got a QB who might be the real thing. You're certainly right that they still have a ton to prove and that they could easily fail. I still have a lot of areas I disagree with them in. But they're making smart plays and their thinking is modern. They've gotten off to the best start of any regime we've seen since Levy in terms of smart moves. But they could easily still fail. Easily. But I'm more hopeful with them than I have been in a long long time.

Agreed that he was stretching it. But you are too. He didn't sell off all of his good players for picks. We're the #1 defense in the league for Pete's sakes, they have some talent. And yeah we could have kept more picks. But coming out of that draft without a potential franchise QB would have been a massive massive mistake. And they didn't know how much it would cost to trade up for one of the top four. And the Bills young talent has looked really good, actually. Just young. A ton of room for development as years pass. And guys like Milano, Taron Johnson, Wyatt Teller, Zay Jones, Dawkins, Jordan Phillips and Tre'D who you're leaving out because they don't fit your narrative shows the weakness of your argument. Our young talent has been pretty damn good. It's not having enough older experienced talent that has held us back so far ... and that's how things generally look early in rebuilds. Way too early to say this rebuild will succeed. No way to know. But they have a good young group of talent in place that has a very decent chance of growing together and being quite good, though yeah it will depend on the guys they continue to bring in and how/if this group, very much including Allen, continue to improve.

And a whole bunch of other things. It'll depend on how well all their decisions come together. It's a wildly complex system. Agreed that drafting well is the most important thing. So far - leaving Allen as an unknown out of it - they appear to have drafted quite well, I think.

Again, not a single fact to back up your position. Got a looooooooooooooooooooong history of that. Dumb questions ain't evidence and they say more about the asker than anything else.

You don't judge a HEAD coach by his offense. You judge him by his offense ... and his defense ... and his special teams. That's why he's the head coach and not the OC. You also need to understand that rebuilds are going to suck, and yeah, this is a rebuild. The Pegulas know, just as they knew there would be screaming and howling from people with no patience or perspective. What we're getting here this year is sure not pleasant. But it's also not what we've been getting since 2001. The problem for most of the time since 2001 has been a consistent belief that we were close and didn't need to rebuild. A feeling that Bills fans would hang in there through a bunch more five, six or seven win seasons. We DIDN'T rebuild much through those awful years. We're rebuilding now. It's very very different. But yeah, painful. But at least this pain has a purpose, more so than yet another seven-win season with a mediocre lineup and no QB and no chance of getting a good one unless we stumbled on a Brady or a Wilson or a Brees further down in the draft. That's why we should be patient. Not being patient hurts only yourself. It's your own blood pressure that is the only thing affected. Either way they're going through with this till they see if Beane and McDermott have done well a couple of years down the road when you can begin to judge.

Is it a one-year contract or a four-year contract? I like Carr, he's smart, but he's reaching here. Too early to say.

If you mean a rookie QB, how well has that worked? The last bunch of rookie QBs have produced very few wins, going back to Russell Wilson who did very well. If you mean a QB on a rookie contract, we haven't lost that chance at all. We've got several more years.

Fair enough, IMHO. Totally agree with you that developing him is the most important thing they'll do (or not do) this year, and most important by a very long margin.

Oh, you think I'm smart? Very kind of you. I wouldn't say I'm all that smart, personally, but whatever you think. And unless you can find somewhere before the last couple of games where McDermott flat-out declared him the starter, than it is very arguable that he changed his mind. I don't know when he first said that, personally, which is why I said it was arguable rather than saying it was factual. But you're getting off-point. All that has to happen for him NOT to be the starter is for McDermott to decide that. And even if he didn't change his mind more than once so far this year, he's a guy who has a history of changing his mind on the starter in just his two years here. It could happen.

That's an utterly stupid argument. Utterly dumb. His first four years his passer rating was 73.4. His career rating is more than ten points higher than that. If he'd had this same stats the rest of his career ... why am I bothering? Stupid argument on the face of it.

There are a lot of ways to improve. Being on the bench and watching is one of them. Probably the four best QBs in the league sat their first years or more, in Rodgers, Mahomes, Brees and Brady.

Or unless the coach changes his mind, which he has already done this year, arguably two or three times. Simple indeed.

Win loss records are team stats, not QB stats. Yes the Giants went 11-5 in Eli's second season. They didn't do it because of Eli. Eli's passer rating that year was 75.9, 26th in the league that year. And he absolutely did NOT go on and have similar stats for the rest of his career. If he had, he wouldn't have had the career he has had or anything close to it. There were still huge arguments about whether Eli would ever be a franchise guy in his fourth year. Then the light came on in the last few games of the season. But thanks for making me go back and look the stats over. You're right, I made a mistake. It was his fourth year, not his fifth that the light came on during. My mistake. Sorry. But in those first four years his total four year passer rating was 73.4. And he absolutely did NOT have similar stats the rest of his career.

Cousins was benched because he was the backup. And because of bad play, which kind of resulted in him staying the backup. I mean, in his first three years his QB ratings were 101.6 his rookie year when RGIII was having that great year and nobody was displacing him. But the next year Griffin was much worse and Cousins was much worse yet with a 58.4. Their third year Cousins again couldn't beat out a beatable Griffin as both had ratings of 86. It was there for the taking and he couldn't take it. And come on, you asked me, "Name me one NFL QB who got in, struggled, was sat and then bounced back to be a franchise guy." All those guys fit that. Now you're throwing in all of these extra little caveats about how he can't be sat because they think he's finished and he can't have someone above him, he can't be established when he gets benched for bad play and so on. Which proves my point exactly. There are a ton of guys who "got in, struggled, were sat and then bounced back to be a franchise guy." It happened for different reasons for many different guys. And yet they bounced back and became franchise guys. It can be done. It has been done many times. It's a legitimate option, a reasonable choice. Not doing that could be a mistake. Or not. I don't know for sure, of course, but it absolutely could be a mistake. If they, you know, start him. If they don't, he's, like, not.

He wasn't an offensive coach. He was the head coach here, and the head coach gets credit for the whole team. I didn't like him quitting but I understood it. He was having a power struggle with Whaley and he was losing. Looking back, it should've been Marrone who won. I don't think he's a terrific coach. Too conservative for me, but he's the best they'd had since Wade. Hopefully McDermott passes him by next year.

Terry Bradshaw. He turned out pretty good, didn't he? Rich Gannon. Alex Smith. Kirk Cousins. Joe Theismann. Kurt Warner. All were benched for performance at some points in their careers and came back. Several were benched early in their careers, same as Allen. Jake Delhomme. Mark Bulger. Was he a franchise guy? I can see arguments that he wasn't, but I think so. Bet I could find some more with not all that much work. You don't have to put him in. He doesn't have to play. There's another very very reasonable option.

Could you just quick link to where I implied it was gospel? I'll wait. Yup. Exactly. Once again the smell of steaming horseshit off one of your posts. I didn't treat it as gospel. I treated it as evidence. Which it is. And since evidence is a thing which you have absolutely none of here, you continue with the loser's argument ... you have no evidence so you throw doubt on the other guy's evidence in a completely non-specific way. It might be a lie. Nothing from the media can be believed. The usual loser's horseshit people with no evidence throw out.

Unfortunately, we can't assume that. It would be much better if it turns out that way. But the Giants didn't know for sure about Eli till near the end of his fifth season. The Chargers thought so little of Drew Brees at the end of his third season that they drafted his replacement. Sometimes you know by the end of the second year. Other times ... you don't. With a Marino, you know. With an Alex Smith you don't. God, yes, Bill. Thank you. Exactly this!!! From your mouth to God's ear!! Wait, what? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! This doesn't need to be Josh Allen's job until it's clear he is or is not the guy. This job should belong to whoever ... will most improve the long-term chances of Josh's success. And there's no reason why sitting on the bench might not help him if he's not ready. Some guys need to sit. It's not completely clear if he's one of those, but to me he sure looks like it.

It's been a staple of self-improvement and business study for many years. I started a journal around 35 years ago and wrote some of my favorite quotes on the cover over the two and a half years it took me to fill it. So it was a bit more than 30 years ago I found and wrote down this quote: "Joy in the work, faith in the process." It's just something to reinforce things for people, as rewards don't come at the same time and in the same quantities as you put in work. When you go on an exercise program and put in two weeks of hard work, you'll look at your lifting results and in the mirror and you'll have made zero progress, or that's what it looks like, anyway. But you don't quit. You have faith in the process. And if you hang in there and if your program is good, you'll start to see results. But there will be plateaus, there will be sudden gains, you will be frustrated. So you have faith in the process and you hang in there. None of which guarantees success in an process as complicated as this one. But it's the way to proceed.