Thurman#1

So, your first sentence is a guess based on absolutely nothing. Your second has no apparent meaning. Yeah, I used "if" twice. And yeah it was based on an article. There's nothing wrong with using "if." Check the dictionary, it's a legitimate word. And yeah, hearsay. I am indeed reporting something that journalists with sources have reported. In court that's a problem. In the real world it means I've made my point. My "if" is based on a source. Your "maybe" has nothing to back it up. Man, that's one horrendous post, dude. To repeat: Nah. You don't "ride the coattails of Belichick and Saban." They don't hire guys they don't respect and they don't tolerate hangers-on. Belichick had him as a coach from 2002 - 2006 and then hired him again in 2013 and then promoted him. That doesn't happen with Belichick unless you're doing your job and doing it very well. And the Boston Herald reported that if McDaniels left, they would see if Daboll was available. And that if McDaniels had left last year Daboll would have got the OC job. https://247sports.com/nfl/new-england-patriots/Bolt/Bill-Belichick-would-check-in-on-Alabamas-Brian-Daboll-if-Josh-McDaniels-leaves-the-New-England-Patriots-113078544/

Of course they'll be back. Allen could sit on the bench or look like developmental rookies look and they will be back. And yes the offense got worse, but this is to be expected. Getting worse is what happens to teams doing a near-complete rebuild. Particularly teams that started out in serious cap trouble. And yes they were in cap trouble. Out of all the people we lost in this cap purge, I agree with you that Woods and Gilmore were the biggest losses. I wanted to keep them both at the time. They were the only two I felt that way about. And they didn't trade Darby for Matthews. They traded Darby for a 3rd round pick so that they could be sure they'd have enough trade capital to be able to get one of the top four QBs, and got Matthews on top of that. Lotulelei is worth every penny. And how come you folks who spend so much time talking about how bad the offense is don't spend the same amount of time talking about how good the defense is? Exactly. Because you only want to mention what's wrong. Things going right don't fit your narrative. And yes the dead cap space is because they got rid of "talent". If they had kept that "talent" they'd have almost no dead cap space but almost exactly the same cap situation this year (the money they spent on dead cap space this year is almost exactly what they saved this year on salary and roster bonuses and stuff. But the huge advantage of accumulating that dead cap space this year is that next year those guys are off the books, whereas if they weren't we'd still be in cap trouble the next few years paying guys like Sammy (assuming we'd ponied up to keep him) and Dareus to underperform their contracts. Murphy's been alright when healthy. "Davis, Gaines, Bodine all terrible"? Good lord, what a horrible point. At least it makes your objective here - finding anything to nitpick and B word about - as plain as the nose on your face. Davis was OK but quit. Costing us less than a mill on the cap assuming they get his signing bonus back, which they are likely to do. Gaines is like veteran minimum for half a season. These guys aren't expensive. Outside of Davis quitting they were cheap fill-ins who are playing like that. They also brought in Poyer and Hyde. Strangely, you didn't mention them along with Davis, Gaines and Bodine. Wonder why that is.

Sorry, man, but that cap thing is true. And pretty much everyone knows it, nationally. It's really only a few Bills fans arguing otherwise. The reason they were able to sign Poyer and Hyde in McDermott's first offseason here was because they had already started a cap purge and knew they had to continue it the next year. Together those two totalled less than $10 mill a year. Those were not big signings. They were both very reasonable. For example, they signed those two for just over half of what they saved by trading Watkins. They signed Poyer and Hyde because they felt they could do that and still get the cap in line so that by 2019 they would have a ton of money to spend. And as they have shown, they were correct. They absolutely did have to do what they did. First because they had told the Pegulas at the interview that they would get the cap in order by the end of 2018. And second because it's how good teams operate. You occasionally see good teams cornering themselves if they feel they're in a Super Bowl window. Needless to say, we are not in a Super Bowl window. And yeah, they chose a difficult path. The only more difficult path would have been all the others. There is no easy path from a team in cap trouble with an average lineup and no QB to being a consistent contender. A complete rebuild is almost certainly the highest-percentage way to go. But there is no easy way. Expect Beane to be here five years at a minimum unless the team absolutely self-combusts over the next couple of years. But looking at their drafts the past two years, my guess is that we'll still see both of them here for another five years or so at least.

Yes, Drew Brees was good with the Chargers. In his fourth year, after one year on the bench and then two of poor play (more INTs than TDs and a total YPA of about 6.0 for those two years and a passer rating in the very low 70s). He needed an awful lot of development, as do many. And this being the modern NFL doesn't change anything. Mahomes is as modern a story as it's possible to get. He sat and developed and that was a very very good thing. And yes you have seen QBs take two or three years to turn into a franchise guy. Cam Newton for one was terrific running the ball early on but when teams figured out how to defend him, for three or four years there were real questions whether he'd ever be a franchise guy or be more than mediocre in the passing game. Kirk Cousins says hi. Eli Manning too. Whether you like the term "project QB" is beside the point. If you don't like it, use a different term. But they're still out there, whatever term you use and they still need development. Not every guy is one. But some are. Oh, Bradshaw wasn't the driver of that Pittsburgh team? Come on. Yeah, they had a good team. But Bradshaw was a terrific QB - after two or three years of development - and without him they don't win those Lombardis. Their offense was 5th, 5th, 7th, 1st, 10th and 8th those years. And I'd take Aikman over Kelly, much as I like Jimbo. Aikman was accurate as hell. And yes after two or three years Aikman had a terrific lineup around him, but so did Kelly. Brett Favre ... took a season on the bench to learn. I think it's pretty likely that during that first year he stopped not knowing "jack about nickel and dime defenses." And for his first year or two of play he was far from "crushing it." Over his first two years on the field, after sitting for a year, he threw 37 TDs and ... wait for it ... 37 INTs. His passer rating for those two years comes out in the 70s, and while passer ratings were definitely lower then, he wasn't crushing it. He looked like he might have a future. His fourth year in the league was when he started playing like Brett Favre. ----------------------------------- As for why Eli didn't want to go to SD, it was more understandable at the time. LT was playing really well, but Gates had just finished a so-so rookie year where he had 24 catches for 389 yards. And who's Chris Chambers? I looked and nobody of that name was on the Chargers roster in either Manning's rookie year or his last year in college. There was a guy of that name at WR on the Chargers in parts of 2007 and 2009 and all of 2008. That Chambers was far from spectacular. SD looked like a franchise that didn't know how to win. They were coming off a 4-12 season. Eli was a rookie in 2004 and SD's last winning season was 1995, a 9-7 season.

Nonsense that he needs to start. Did Mahomes need to start as a rookie? EDIT: Oh, it hasn't been decided? Horrible thread, then.

You headline says, "A number one". No, I think the odds are miniscule. But your post says "THE number one," I guess meaning our best receiver. Yeah, I would give that a smaller but not miniscule chance of happening. The throw's fault.

Very cool. Thanks. But why is he referencing an article of rainwear? Sorry, bad spelling joke.

Nonsense. There are plenty of "good NFL quarterbacks" who didn't have serviceable rookie years. Look at Drew Brees.He wasn't able to beat out a dead-armed Doug Flutie. Flutie in Brees' rookie year completed 56.4% of his passes, threw 15 TDs and 18 INTs, managed a horrible YPA of 6.6 and a QB rating of 72.0. And Brees couldn't beat him out and was bad enough over the next two years that the Chargers drafted Rivers. I personally consider Brees a "good NFL quarterback." Would you disagree? Was Troy Aikman a "good NFL quarterback"? Because he bit the large one as a rookie. Nine TDs and eighteen INTs and a QB rating of 55.7!!! Plenty of QBs who turned out excellent sucked as rookies. Look at Terry Bradshaw. Rich Gannon threw 21 passes total over his first three years and became a very fine QB. I don't disagree that they did a bad job of building a QB room that would keep him on the bench for the first year. Beane has already said that he should've brought someone else in after he got rid of McCarron.

The article doesn't back up the fact that it was always going to be Allen. What it says about Newton is that physically you want someone like Newton. But Newton isn't mentioned about leadership, decision-making or anything but physical makeup, really. Nah. Not on that basis anyway. Newton has a career passer rating of 86.6. That undersells him a bit because his first four years or so he was always a low to mid-eighties guy. It wasn't certain for the first two or three years that Carolina had gotten a franchise guy with him. Look at the rookie years of an awful lot of great QBs and you'll see guys who weren't very good. The odds are a good deal higher than 1%. But anywhere from a floor of 5 - 10% to a ceiling of 30 - 50% is arguable, really. Looking at a rookie year tells you little or nothing unless you somehow stumble onto a Dan Marino or an outlier like him that just obviously has it. There are a fair amount of guys who play decent as rookies. Very few are obviously franchise guys early, and that very much includes Newton.

Nice. Thanks for posting this. It's hopeful. Yeah, we traded away the guy who was likely our best ... as he plays the same position as the guy who was likely our 2nd best, and much cheaper besides. We also had holes at WR, LB, DL, QB and CB, and a few others besides, and not much depth. I know I personally was shocked to find that a team in a rebuild and in salary cap trouble besides hadn't plugged all those holes. Oh, wait, I wasn't. Perhaps if you re-checked your fact check? Seventeen plays. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/snapcounts And I mildly disagree about Ducasse, as well. He's consistently underappreciated on this board. He was solid last year, and though he has taken a step back recently he started the year pretty well.

Bills. And I'd have a lot of confidence in that bet.

Really? A lot of coordinators for Belichick and Daboll failed elsewhere ... as coordinators? As head coaches, yes. But as coordinators, the record is positive overall, I'd argue. And Daboll isn't a head coach here, he's a coordinator. I totally disagree with you that our offense has been conservative or uncreative this year. Unsuccessful, yes. But not all that conservative. We've seen the wildcat, we've seen gadget plays, the read option ... And being unsuccessful with a crappy offensive roster early in a rebuild doesn't necessarily mean the coach is doing a bad job. It might be that the plays would have worked if they'd been better executed. It could be partly Daboll's fault, but there are some smart people on both sides of the issue of whether Daboll is doing a good job. IMHO it's just not conclusive.

2017 champion Eagles: #7 offense, #4 defense 2016 champion Pats: #4 offense, #8 defense 2015 champion Broncos: #16 offense, #1 defense 2014 champion Pats: #11 offense, #13 defense 2013 champion Seahawks: #18 offense, #1 defense Very arguable indeed. The defenses average a lot better than the offenses during the last five years that you mentioned.

Day 1 or Day 2? So, rounds 1 - 3? Shaq Lawson says hi. He was picked in the 1st round by the Rexy administration. John Miller was a 3rd for Rexy. As for cutting so many, it may be unusual but the situation was unusual. They needed draft capital to trade up to bring in a QB and they were in awful cap shape. Both of those made it difficult to keep the roster together. And part of that is simply because we had done a terrible job of holding onto high draft picks in the previous years. A lot of that was because of the constant scheme changes causing decent players not to fit anymore. When McDermott came in, there were only these guys left on the team of previous 1st, 2nd and 3rd rounders: 1) Lawson - still here 2) Ragland - didn't play well in the new scheme 3) Adolphus Washington - wasn't good enough 4) John Miller - still here 5) Darby - cap and scheme problems 6) Watkins - cap concerns and a need for draft capital to get a QB, production and injury concerns 7) Preston Brown - didn't make the team eight) Robert Woods - cap concerns. Looking back, a bad decision IMHO 9) Stephon Gilmore - cap concerns. I hated this move but they had to cut cap 10) Cordy Glenn - future cap concerns and a need for draft capital 11) Marcell Dareus - couldn't get to meetings. But he also saved a ton of cap starting next year and hasn't played up to his salary even in Jax 12) Eric Wood - would still be here if not for the injury Gone before McDermott got here: the 2015 1st rounder traded away for Watkins, Kiko Alonso, EJ Manuel, Cyrus Kouandjio, Marquise Goodwin, TJ Graham, Aaron Williams, Kelvin Sheppard CJ Spiller, Torell Troup, Alex Carrington, Aaron Maybin, Jairus Byrd, Andy Levitre, Leodis McKelvin, Chris Ellis, Trent Edwards, James Hardy, Marshawn and every other 1st or 2nd rounder that came before. So out of all the previous 1st, 2nd and 3rd round choices, only 12 guys were left on the team before they came in.Out of those 12, Lawson and Miller are still there, so that leaves 10. Preston Brown, Adolphus Washington and Ragland didn't play well enough in the new scheme and we managed to get a pick for Ragland. That leaves 7. Dareus they wanted to keep but he made it impossible, Eric Wood was forced to retire. That leaves five guys gone in two years that were there and might have been good enough to stay and play. Darby, Watkins, Woods, Gilmore and Glenn. That's not some kind of extraordinary situation, especially as Darby didn't appear to fit the scheme and is having a bad year in Philly, though he may well improve again, Watkins is still underperforming his salary as he has every year, and Glenn had real injury concerns and we had a younger, cheaper guy we thought could play the position. Not that extraordinary for a team that is rebuilding, a team that had promised the owners to straighten out the cap by the end of this year and needed draft capital to trade up in a QB-rich draft.

Nah. You don't "ride the coattails of Belichick and Saban." They don't hire guys they don't respect and they don't tolerate hangers-on. Belichick had him as a coach from 2002 - 2006 and then hired him again in 2013 and then promoted him. That doesn't happen with Belichick unless you're doing your job and doing it very well. And the Boston Herald reported that if McDaniels left, they would see if Daboll was available. And that if McDaniels had left last year Daboll would have got the OC job. https://247sports.com/nfl/new-england-patriots/Bolt/Bill-Belichick-would-check-in-on-Alabamas-Brian-Daboll-if-Josh-McDaniels-leaves-the-New-England-Patriots-113078544/

QBR has some bizarre results. And nobody really knows why, because it's an opaque stat. Ryan Fitzpatrick is tied for the third-best QB this year. And Trubisky is #7. And again, nobody knows why, exactly. And last year, Dak Prescott was the fourth-best, Keenum, #2, was a bit better than Brady, who was #3, and Blake Bortles was the 12th best just a bit behind Brees at #9. Oh, and Tyrod Taylor was the 14th best last year and the 9th best the year before. Watson has a ways to go before he shows himself elite. But he's playing at a level that's above average so far this year.

Yes. Which shows that you can predict the outcome of a large group of people. But not what will happen with one individual. With one individual you can say "Only about 1% of all QBs who appear on a roster become franchise guys." Or you can say, "Only about 5% of all drafted QBs become franchise guys." Or you can say, "Only about 20% of QBs picked in the 1st and 2nd round become franchise QBs." Or you can say, "Only about 40% of 1st round QBs become franchise guys." Or you can say, "Only about 50% of QBs picked in the top ten picks become franchise QBs." Or you could go back and figure out how many years three or more QBs were picked in the top top ten what the results were for those guys." Or you could try to slant it against Allen as far as possible and you could say, "Only about '28% of QBs picked 2nd to 32nd are successful.'" All of those are more or less true, though I didn't bother calculating the exact numbers. Each tells less about any one particular QB's probably outcome and more about how you selected your group to try to produce the result you wanted. Or you could do the best you could to look at one particular guy. You could say, "This guy has all the physical tools. And he was picked top ten. In a year when four guys were picked in the top ten, which means the later guys might well have been picked far earlier if the two picked #1 and #3 hadn't come out the same year. Or not ... who knows, but it's possible." And you could continue, "He's a small school guy. Those guys come in less prepared, they're more developmental. And he can run. That'll help him a bit. But it's hard to judge him by his college experience because the guys on his team just weren't good enough to compete with the good teams and that handicapped him." And that the converse was also true, that he played a relatively easy schedule, making it again harder to judge how he'll play against NFL competition. You could go into injury history, the fact that he was widely considered a guy who would need a year or more to sit and develop behind somebody and didn't get the chance to do so. And that in the NFL, surrounded by a poor offensive roster but with an excellent defensive roster helping keep games in reach, he has played one really good games and five at varying levels of badness. And what you'll come out of all of that with ... unless your prejudices have made up your mind for you and you're trying to prove your point rather than do an intelligent prediction ... is that there's no way to know and we'll have to wait and see. Intelligent reasonable guesses could probably fall anywhere between, roughly, a 15% and 60% chance to play well.

No, history shows that many don't and many do and you don't know which is which. That's what history shows. You can parse it a million different ways, but what history shows about the results in an individual case is only that we simply don't know what will happen.

Good advice. Add the words "... condescending and insulting ..." and you should strongly consider it yourself.

I wouldn't take personally a statement that is opinion and not really very thoughtful opinion. Please don't worry about my feelings, and don't take this personally yourself. Why would I take offense at something that I think is mostly wrong? One or two might be (relatively) garbage. Some might not fit. Some might be replaced cheaper. Some might be cheap to sign. And there are also some guys who are good and will cost some money. I mentioned Jerry Hughes, Jordan Phillips, Eddie Yarbrough, a year or two of Lorax and guys who could easily become more expensive depending how they play the next year or so such as Julian Stanford, Ducasse and Terrelle Pryor. They could very easily and reasonably spend a pretty good chunk of money on this group and an extra $2 to $5 mill on a few of the cheaper guys as well. And the guy you were responding to in no way said that the whole $90 mill is going towards our own players. So if that's what you were responding to, you were missing the point. And again, as I pointed out, there is no requirement for them to spend all or most of the $90 mill next year.

Um, no, it's a fact. Getting a QB who might be a franchise QB is building a foundation. That's already a fact. Not all foundations work out well. But this is indeed a foundation stone for them, along with the defense. What we'll see about is whether the offense they're building the foundation for is successful or not. That is indeed up in the air. We should see the answer over the next two to three years. Nah. They didn't fire Rex because he regressed by a win. They fired him because he was coming across as a clown and because he hadn't delivered on his promises. Unlike McDermott, Rex promised a no-pain reload that was going to turn under his brilliant leadership into an excellent team very quickly. He couldn't deliver on any of that. Whereas McDermott and Beane have been realistic about what's coming ... namely the pain of a rebuild followed by hope. They made their goal being a consistent competitor for championships. But they made it pretty clear it wouldn't come in the short term. When / if it becomes obvious they can't deliver, they absolutely should be called to account. We'll have to wait to see how that turns out down the road.

Who is up for a contract? Kelvin Benjamin. I get it if people don't want to re-sign him, but he's up. If he comes cheap, who knows? Jordan Phillips. He's looked really good. Eddie Yarbrough. IMHO they'd really like to keep him. Lorax. He won't get anything long-term but I bet they'd love to keep him another year or two. Derek Anderson. They might want to keep him as a QB mentor for Josh. John Miller, Jordan Mills, Ryan Groy and Jeremiah Sirles. Not a lot of cornerstones there, but they might easily want to keep a couple of these guys, with the intention of bringing in guys who will outplay them and make them second-teamers. Terrelle Pryor. Not sure what he is, at this point but they could easily want to keep him. Guys who they might want to re-sign this off-season or during the year next year rather than wait till they become FAs in 2020: Chris Ivory. McCoy, though I doubt it. Bodine, Ducasse, Hughes, Julian Stanford. No, they won't sign all of them, not a chance. But many? Yeah, the ones they think fit. Would that take $90 mill? Not even close, of course. But do they have to spend all of it? Or even 90%? Nope. The league as a whole has to spend 90% of it's cap, but that isn't usually a problem. Look at the Browns and Colts, who each still have more than $50 mill on the cap right now. SF has $36 mill and Tennessee $23 mill. The salary cap is $177 mill this year and the Jets still have $19 mill. That's five teams that spent less than 90% this year. We may well be one of those teams next year. But I'd expect them to bring in a bunch of low- and mid-priced guys to fill holes and build depth. Spending it won't be a problem. But if they have a bunch left, that's also not a problem.

Yeah. Zimmer's good. Quinn's really good. Offensive guys are the latest trend, but the bottom line is that it's not which side a guy comes from, it's how good a head coach he is. We did that cutting and trading in a salary cap purge and because a number of guys didn't fit the system. They've made it very clear they will build through the draft and fill in with FAs, but not highly-priced ones. And this is the blueprint of nearly every team that's been consistently successful in the NFL in the last fifteen or twenty years.

Mario isn't the kind of guy they're going to want to sign. He was maybe the #1 FA available that year. This FO have made it pretty clear that they want to build through the draft, get their core players there, and fill in holes with low- and mid-priced FAs and re-sign our own guys. Look at how Carolina handled FAs while Beane and McDermott were there. There were no Marios signed. Some good players but the Panthers weren't chasing the high-priced guys. Expect more of the same.

Yup. He was awful here. And better again back in Washington afterwards. He appeared to really miss Washington and pined away here. That was a bizarre situation.