Thurman#1

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.

It's not clear. His offenses as OC haven't been that successful, but was that because he sucked or because it's not possible to be successful with the absolute crud he had at QB and on the rest of the roster besides. But the fact that he kept getting OC jobs, including from some of the sharpest coaches in the world, Saban and Belichick, makes it very likely indeed that there is at least a very good argument that he was indeed a good OC hamstrung by bad talent. Yup. But that was because he had good players. See, that's how it works. When an OC you don't like has good players, he doesn't deserve the credit for his offense having success. And when the same guy has bad players, it's not the players fault, it's the coach's fault.

That sums it up for me. He's a rook, but that's not a good look.

It do rollover. https://www.dawgsbynature.com/2018/2/23/17045734/browns-carry-over-58-9-million-in-unused-cap-space-from-2017-to-2018-league-year

I respect his talent but don't think RBs, even Bell, are worth what he wants to get. This is a fiscally conservative front office. They may well agree. They have a lot of money to spend, but also many needs. If they do give any FA a huge contract, I'd bet they do so at a more important position. I could be wrong, though, of course. Agreed. I have no problem with what he's done, but if I were a GM I just wouldn't give him the money he's looking for. But I wouldn't consider a guy who did that any kind of character problem or think of what he's done as anti-team.

Especially as Daboll may not have been in any danger in the first place. It's very reasonable to think they may have considered that most of the problems on offense were caused not by coaching but by young, new or not good enough QBs combined with a roster that has, on offense, more weaknesses than strengths.

Cool. I enjoy yours too even when I disagree.

Nah. The Bills got the win today. Advantage the Bills. Wins are not a QB stat, they are a team stat. Who is posting about what might not have negative relevance to what these two guys will become and what will be said about their careers in the future, but it sure doesn't have any relevance above zero. It's way way way too early to know about Rosen and Allen. And the Taylorheads mostly disappeared within a month of letting him go. Sorry you saw my post before I edited it for politeness, or rather for my rudeness.

It's way way way too early to know about either guy. Gunner's post here makes sense. There's reason for hope ... for both of them, really.

Oh, you're right, it was not confusing. I read the first quarter of your post and it was so very far off-target I didn't bother to read the rest. Once you said Zay Jones was a "complete whiff here. Jones is a backup caliber WR" I figured I didn't need to continue. That is such a poor evaluation. You had been far off on Milano, Phillips, Dawkins and Johnson as well. Why respond to the nonsense in detail, I figured. Looking back again, I was quite right. As for several posters understanding that post ... there's no real evidence of that, is there? Not one person but me responded to it. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have bothered.

Yeah, they traded away the now one-dimensional Dareus and filled it with the one-dimensional Lotulelei. Who gets to meetings and buses on time and avoids legal problems, drug suspensions and the like, unlike Dareus. Whatever else you might think of McDermott he's earned the right to say he knows how to put a defense together and if he wants Lotulelei, he probably has a reason. And that's some pretty nice spin there about defensive incompetence after the trade. Doesn't hold up to examination at all. The defence was pretty awful for three games in a row there and then played well for the rest of the season. In their last six games plus the playoff game so seven games total, they allowed more than sixteen points only twice, both times to the Patriots. And total over five seasons isn't the way to look at charges. It's not how they're looking at it at OBD. They are getting their cap house in order. To do that they used a strategy which works together with the rebuild. They were willing to use dead cap money to move money that would have strangled us in the future forward into this year's dead cap category. Yeah, that hurt us this year, but opened up a ton of space and possibility in the future, precisely what's called for in both a rebuild and in a cap cleanup. Couldn't agree more that they got lucky to get in the playoffs. I wish they'd lost a few more games last year. I was hoping they would completely rebuild, dumping guys like Tyrod and McCoy and a few others without whom we would have won several games less. Instead, IMHO they valued winning too much, which meant they had to give too much draft capital away - two seconds, the #23 pick and Corey Glenn besides, to trade up for Allen. If we'd been picking higher we could have gotten him at the same spot much cheaper, or maybe they could have traded up to the #3 spot and pre-empted the Jets, giving them a wider choice of QB.

Not at all. It only made sense. He's got a $16 mill a year contract to play only against the run. He's wildly underperforming, as he has since pretty much the instant he signed that huge second contract. Letting him go cost us $13 mill in dead cap. But keeping him would've cost us around $49 mill over the rest of his contract, (not including the salary money we saved by shipping half his 2017 salary over to Jax) and he is greatly underperforming that contract. Yeah, he's costing us a ton of dead cap, but we're saving a lot more over the next few years by not keeping him. And this rebuild has as one of its many causes that they promised the Pegulas that they'd clean up the cap by the end of this year. And one way to do that is by eating dead cap this year in exchange for cap room down the road. And the pick we got for Marcell turned out to be Wyatt Teller who so far looks very promising indeed. Plus he may have been more talented back in the day. But not any more. The Jags are playing him only on run plays. It is pretty questionable whether he's any better than Lotulelei. He was back when he was averaging seven or eight sacks a season. Not so much so now he's averaging less than two a season.